Normally out of principal I wouldn’t see this movie. But when the movie you were going to see isn’t playing and there is nothing that you haven’t seen your options are limited. So with that my friend and I saddled up to see “Let Me In” the remake of the “Let the Right One In.”.
At first my hopes rose a tad because I see it’s a Hammer production. Hammer produced some of the finest horror movies of the seventies and remade many of the monster classics with decent new versions. So the film takes place in Los Alamos, New Mexico. They should have picked a better location there since honestly. I had no clue until this movie that New Mexico ever received snow. Also there is a subtitle that this is 1983 as if the clothing, the music and everything else won’t let you know this fact that you are in fact transported to that magic era…the eighties. So there is an ambulance and a couple police cars racing through the roads to get to the hospital.
We hear from the radio the man who is in the ambulance has received massive burns to his face from a certain type of acid. We as the audience see nothing of this horrible mess. They take him in. A cop played by the actor who played Casey Jones in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie ages ago arrives. He wants to question the man about a satanic cult he thinks he is involved with.
Casey Jones leaves to take a call. There is a scream and the nurses rush in. The man took a swan dive out the window making a Rorschach of blood on the ground below. We get a screen saying 3 weeks earlier. Owen is a poor little boy who lives with his mom while his folks are in the process of a divorce. Like “Roger Rabbit” you never see the Mom’s face. But considering that every scene she is in has an open wine bottle as a prop you can discover that they made this version of her an alcoholic.
Owen goes to school and is picked on by bullies. If you saw the first movie you may have thought it was strange that Oskar was picked on so mercilessly by the bullies. In this one they take it to new levels. If Owen as much as looks at these guys he gets tormented. So he gets a wedgie and pisses himself. Life is great for him. It’s the kind of kid you read about that brings a gun to school one day.
Well one night while wearing a mask and pretending to threaten a girl with a kitchen knife (YA RLY!). He spies a new family moving next door. This is Abby and her keeper. Abby doesn’t wear shoes for the most part and they make a lot of noise moving in. Owen meets Abby outside where she says they can’t be friends. Owen says he didn’t want to be friends anyway.
That night the Keeper goes out and dressed in his finest trash bag mask hides in a kid’s backseat of their car. He waits till they are parked and renders them unconscious. The then hoists them up in a tree and drains his blood to fill a container. The container spills and he has to go home empty handed. This pisses off Abby. So after hanging with Owen, in which Owen lends he a Rubik’s cube (this is the eighties remember) to solve she goes hunting herself.
A man is jogging through a tunnel at around midnight, ok, unless you are Batman I think most people avoid doing that kind of insane crap. So he sees the little Abby there and she plays like she’s hurt. She then attacks him in a really crappy CGI scene that was more funny then scary. The morning comes. Owen goes to school after finding the cube solved. There is an assembly about the dead kid. Owen takes a book to learn Morse code so he and Abby can communicate through the wall. For some reason the fact that Owen is writing in the middle of class pisses of the lead bully.
So while in the bathroom the lead d-bag gives him a cut on the cheek. But because he is scared he won’t tell his crappy parents who aren’t really involved in this story anyway. Owen takes Abby to a play Ms. PacMan (did I mention this was the eighties?). They also eat buy some Now and Later candy from a guy dressed as Boy George (I CAN’T GET OVER HOW EIGHTIES THIS MOVIE IS). This candy makes her throw up.
So the Keeper finds another victim but it things go awry. Another guy joins him in the car. He goes to get gas. The passenger notices him. They fight. He steals the car and he crashes the car. It’s filmed really cool actually. In the process of laying there waiting to be apprehended he takes a bottle of acid and pours it on his face. So now we are back to the beginning. A nurse is watching Pres. Reagan make a speech (It’s like a time warp!) Abby spider climbs up the building to her keeper and bites him to put him out of his misery and lets him fall to his death out the window.
She comes to Owen’s window and they sleep in the same bed. She says she’ll go steady with him even though she is not a girl. In the morning she is gone. Owen’s class is going ice skating. The bullies want to push him into the water so Owen nails the head bully with a metal pole in the head. He gets in trouble but it’s not near as bad since the little kids discover the body of the jogger stuck in the ice. It made for a fun field trip.
Happy he stood up to the bullies Owen takes Abby to a make out spot to make it their secret area. He cuts his thumb to make them have a blood oath. This freaks little Abby out. She starts lapping at the blood and gets all monstrous. She then races out the room and goes and bites a local girl with more CGI and runs away.
Owen puts a band-aid when he should get stitches for the cut he just gave himself. He calls his Dad asking about the nature of evil. His Dad doesn’t know what the hell is going on and blows him off. So he sees Abby finds out that her Keeper was once young like he was with her. He finds out what she is. She even comes over. But he doesn’t invite her in. When she just comes in she spouts blood and gets gross until invited. So he lets her shower and change into one of his mom’s old dresses. While she is changing he peeks in at Abby and he sees something. If you saw the original you know what it is. But in this movie it’s never spoken of again.
The girl that was bitten is in the hospital awakes and starts gnawing on her arm. The nurse, not noticing this mind you, walks in and opens the shades, causing them both to dies as the flames erupt from the new vampire girl immolating the room. The Casey Jones cop now has a lead. He goes to the house of the Keeper. He breaks the door. He digs around and finds Abby in the bathroom sleeping in the he almost burns her but Owen saves the day causing he cop to get killed by Abby.
Abby realized since she killed a cop she has to go. He gives Owen a blood covered kiss and leaves. Owen stays late after school one day for some strength training. The bullies come back with the older brother of the one that got his ear split. They grab Owen and with a knife tell him to that if he can hold his breath for 3 minutes he’ll just get knick but if he can’t he looses and eye. So he goes underwater. There are screams and more crappy CGI as you see body parts enter the water. Abby saved the day. The end is Owen on a train running away with Abby in a truck as her new Keeper.
This movie took something good and totally took a dump on it. The characters are bland the story is a weaker version. If American audiences hate reading so much during foreign movies watch the original with the dubbing. It’s still better than this. This movie was basically saying “Well American audiences are dullards that need symbolism and simple story so let’s simplify this story by a huge percentage and hand it to them on a silver platter.” It’s a huge middle finger.
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