The thing about most Hollywood remakes of foreign films is that the originals tend to have a multiplex-friendly component to begin with: something that lends itself to easily translatable entertainment.
Not quite so easy with the 2008 Swedish film “Let the Right One In.” Although a vampire picture, the movie was also a very slow, delicate arthouse movie.
Those same quiet qualities have been held over in “Let Me In,” the remake. In other words, it’s an arthouse movie, opening wide.
Director Matt Reeves (“Cloverfield”) and a fine cast have thoughtfully rearranged the original, while keeping the essentials intact. In Los Alamos, New Mexico, during a snowy winter, 12-year-old Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee, the kid from “The Road”) is enduring bullying from his thuggish classmates.
He meets an odd new neighbor in his drab housing complex. This is Abby (Chloe Moretz). She’s also 12, but an “old”12.
The tentative friendship blossoms as Los Alamos sees a strange rash of nocturnal blood-lettings. Some of them involve Abby’s apparent guardian.
Reeves builds up the vampire attacks so they are creepy and gory — their violence stands out from the hushed tone of the rest of the picture — but the heart of the movie still resides in the ghostly friendship between the two adolescents.
Here the remake succeeds again, thanks to the muffled atmosphere and the two grave-beyond-their-years young actors.
Smit-McPhee, an unusual-looking boy, is properly neutral as Owen. Moretz, the pint-sized crusader in “Kick-Ass,” is equally good as the haunted Abby.
Drifting through most scenes in “Let Me In” is a softly falling snow, which sets the tone of wintry melancholy. Vampire movies are at their best when rooted in regret (see the success of the “Twilight” franchise), and this film certainly has that coursing through its veins. Except for the some startling gore, “Let Me In” doesn’t stray far from the original.
It’s still worth asking why anybody felt the need to redo “Let the Right One In” in the first place. But as remakes go, we’ve seen worse.
“Let Me In”
A thoughtful remake of the 2008 Swedish vampire film “Let the Right One In,” more arthouse than multiplex. Lonely 12-year-olds Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz at center of blood-lettings.
Rated: R, for violence, nudity.
Showing: Alderwood, Cinebarre Mountlake Terrace, Everett, Galaxy Monroe, Marysville, Metro, Thornton Place, Woodinville, Cascade Mall.
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