Director Matt Reeves is currently getting all kinds of recognition for making DC and Warner Bros.’ newest hit, The Batman, combining style with a sense of grit and realism. Long before he took to the streets of Gotham City, however, Reeves made a film involving another type of bat person. The result was a rare example of a remake done right.
Let Me In was an American-British remake of the Swedish movie Let the Right One In, and it’s just as good. In fact, some would argue that the few changes made actually make it both closer to the original novel and a better movie. The techniques, storytelling elements and general atmosphere of Let Me In would definitely show up in later Reeves films, including The Batman.
What Was Matt Reeves’ Let Me In?
Based on the novel from John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let Me In was released two years after the original Swedish film adaptation. Moving the story to America and changing many of the names, Let Me In still scares up a disturbing tale that’s perhaps even more accurate to the book.
The story follows Owen, a bullied young boy in New Mexico who befriends a girl named Abby. As their bond grows stronger, the vampiric truth behind the ageless Abby slowly comes to light. Meanwhile, numerous murders rack up in the neighborhood, putting the police on edge as they try to discover the truth behind the bloodbath. At the heart of it all, however, is the growing love between Owen and Abby, which inevitably reaches off-putting ends.
Let Me In succeeds not just in replicating what worked in the original but in actually surpassing it in some areas. While naturalistic lighting and cinematography worked in the snowy Swedish landscape of Let the Right One In, Let Me In is more visually interesting, especially when the film’s vampire is forced to feed. This makes it seem like more of an actual horror/vampire movie, whereas the original film was much more subdued with its horror elements, especially in a supernatural sense. While it worked there because it was so unexpected, viewers who had already seen the original definitely needed some extra spice to differentiate this version. The way that some of the scenes play out, along with the general atmosphere, is also more in line with Lindqvist’s book, which is ironic given that it’s the version that’s not Swedish.
How Let Me In Foreshadowed The Batman
Even with ramping up how much bite the vampire has, Let Me In still strikes a delicate Matt Reeves balance between style, grittiness, realism and the supernatural. While the vampire aspects still feel like vampirism, it’s never overdone and doesn’t downplay the very human drama at its core. The same can be said for Reeves’ two entries in the Planet of the Apes prequel/reboot trilogy, which were released a few years ago to increasingly stellar reception.
The Apes films, of course, had intelligent talking chimps and gorillas, but it never played this concept stupidly, keeping things as grounded as possible to make the movies’ message the real star. The cinematography was also fittingly muted and fairly mundane while still having a style that didn’t just blend in with the everyday and could go epic when needed.
The same is now the case with The Batman, which combines much of the grounded nature of the Nolan trilogy with a more slick and dramatic flare. The result is something grandiose and larger than life but still poignantly human. The seeds of these concepts arguably began for the director in 2008’s Cloverfield, but they truly came to fruition in Let Me In, a remake that could actually take a bite out of its progenitor.
The Batman arrives in theaters on March 4. Let Me In can currently be streamed on Netflix.
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