Spot the Difference: "Let the Right One In"; vs. "Let Me In"

Obviously, the first noticeable difference is between the titles – the English title to the Swedish film is a warning, whereas the American title is a command. This simple difference, as much as anything in the two films, should tell you all you need to know about the purpose of each – Tomas Alfredson’s film warns of the choices we make and their consequences, whereas, not unsurprisingly, Matt Reeves’ film portrays victims subservient to the whim of fate.
I wasn’t surprised by Reeves’ approach to the material because it is a rare American or Hollywood movie that depicts nuances between good and evil. Most American movies assume a fairly diametrical opposition between the forces of good and evil and rarely place us in a position in which we have to make choices or decide for ourselves. This is why Reeves’ film opens with the cops giving an escort to the ambulance taking ‘The Father’ to hospital after he’s doused himself with acid. Thus, we are told that this is the ‘bad guy’, and don’t really need the ambulance driver to actually say, “Patient is a criminal suspect!” – but this is an American movie, so the words must be said, just so it’s clear to everyone. Compare this with the amount of direct information we are given in Alfredson’s film. Oh, sorry, we’re not given any. Damned foreigners!
That opening of Reeves’ film serves another purpose. It tells us what kind of film we are watching. We can cope with the more ambiguous bits because, ultimately, we’re watching a somewhat routine cop thriller. That Elias Koteas’ policeman falls victim to Abby’s need to survive only serves to do in this film what Alfredson refuses to do in his original – Abby is evil, Eli is, well, you decide.
It has long been argued in vampire movies that the killing of human beings in no more wrong or evil than a lion killing an antelope. Alfredson leaves this argument unspoken but forces us to ponder whether it suffices as justification for Eli’s actions. After Oskar surmises that Eli is a vampire, he asks her who she is. She claims to be the same as him. Oskar refutes this by stating that he doesn’t kill people. Eli replies, “No, but you’d like to. If you could…to get revenge!” She then makes her plea, “Oskar, I do it because I have to.” This is as close as we come to a justification in this movie. Whether we accept Eli’s argument depends entirely upon how we relate to the character. There is no good and evil in this movie, no religious symbolism, and apart from the obvious necessity for police to attend crime scenes, no law that demands we condemn Eli. Alfredson leaves it entirely up to his audience to decide the right and wrong of Eli’s actions. This is why Brian Eggert is wrong in his dismissal of this movie as a mere yarn.
When Eggert says that “’Let the Right One In’ does represent the glum nature of teen angst” but “that’s where the philosophic exploration ends” he leaves himself open to questioning of his understanding of existentialism. And, he seems not to realise that a twelve-year-old is not a teenager. ‘Twilight’, which was released the same year, seems to have coloured his vision to the extent that he can’t see what’s in front of him. Let the Right One In is not comparable to Twilight if, for no other reason, than it’s not about teen love.
With Let Me In, Eggert realises that Eli is grooming Owen as her minder, but only because Reeves has Owen find a strip of photographs of “The Father’ as a young boy alongside Eli. Such an obvious tell is not present in the Swedish film, though the observant or questioning audience will, at the very least, wonder.
Let me just say that Brian Eggert’s ‘Deep Focus Reviews’ is an excellent website and the first place I go when I want to know anything about a given film. For all that I disagree with him on this particular film – and what’s the harm in that? – it is clear that he actually watched the film he discusses. I’m not so sure that Roger Ebert ever did! How Ebert can watch that scene in which Oskar and his mother brush their teeth and then describe his parents as “horrible” is beyond comprehension.
In both films, Oskar’s/Owen’s parents are separated. The difference is that in Alfredson’s film, there is little sign of animosity and his mother doesn’t go to bed drunk after drinking copious amounts of white wine. She is, in fact, an exemplary single mother. Clearly, she loves her son and is nothing but fraught with anxiety the night he fails to come home, having spent it at Eli’s.
Again, this is a fundamental difference between the two films. Let the Right One In offers no simplistic answers to the question of how our off-spring come to make the choices they do. Oskar, besides having a weak father who is also the victim of bullying, is a normal boy with no inherent reason to choose to become the companion of a blood-lusting vampire. Oskar’s fantasies of revenge are unfocussed, directed at no one in particular. As Eli reminds him, the first words she – and we - hears him say are, “Then squeal like a pig! Squeal!” Owen’s equivalent words, as he pays homage to Michael Myers in his bedroom, are, “Hey, little girl!” Whereas Oskar is just a normal boy taking out his frustrations on a tree, Owen is most definitely a serial killer in gestation. Oskar’s destiny is determined purely by his own choices; Owen is born a killer. Alfredson gives us no reasons for the choices Oskar makes. Reeves has no less a personage than President Ronald Reagan tell us that evil exists.
Where Alfredson asks us to ponder our choices and the very nature of evil, Reeves denies us the freedom of thinking for ourselves. In no way whatsoever is Eli presented as evil in Let the Right One In. Whether we consider her evil is as much up to us as Oskar’s choices are up to him. Reeves, because he’s making a Hollywood picture, cannot resist the temptation to use CGI to ram home to us that Abby – unlike Eli – is in no way a nice, if somewhat strange, girl. He even has her speaking in a voice borrowed straight out of The Exorcist.
There is one ‘goof’ in Alfredson’s film that left me puzzled. After killing The Father at the hospital, Eli flies over to Oskar’s and taps on his window, asking if she can come in. She then takes off her bloodied clothes and climbs into bed with the hopeful Oskar. Later in the film, she knocks on Oskar’s door and, again, tells him that he must invite her in. When he doesn’t and says there’s nothing stopping her, she enters and bad happens. But why does she need this second invitation? Traditionally, once a vampire has been invited in, they can come and go at will – it is how Dracula himself is able to visit Lucy Westenra over several nights in Bram Stoker’s novel.
You would think, wouldn’t you, in re-writing the script for an American audience familiar with vampire lore due to the many sources from popular TV shows – Buffy, the Vampire Slayer; Angel; Vampire Diaries; etc. etc. etc. – that Reeves would spot this incongruity and smooth it out. Well, you’d be wrong! Maybe it’s because Reeves is unable to think for himself that he gives his audience no freedom to think through the moral niceties of his characters and their actions.
Because I watched Let Me In directly after watching Let the Right One In its flaws were obvious. While I think I’d probably notice them anyway, I’m not so sure they would have spoilt the film as much as they did. Taken on its own merits, there is much worth watching in Reeves’ film, especially if you’re never going to watch the subtitled Swedish original. Apart from its look and tone – which it simply takes from the original – Let Me In is fairly standard Hollywood – too much unrequired action, not enough freedom to think.

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