Review: LET ME IN

It's always a shaky proposition remaking a film that was considered by many to be an instant classic upon its release, but that's exactly the task director Matt Reeves (CLOVERFIELD) decided to undertake with his latest film, LET ME IN, which isn't so much a remake of the Swedish film as a re-adaptation of John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel (and his subsequent screenplay adaptation) LET THE RIGHT ONE IN.  Reeves' new film stands wholly on its own, though as a consequence of its being adapted so closely from the same source material there are many similarities in dialogue, certain sequences, and even mood.  This isn't to diminish the American film in any way in regard to the original, and I'm simply making mention of the inevitable comparisons many will make (over and over again) between the two films.  I don't really think that's fair to Reeves, or to his actors, or to anyone involved in LET ME IN, which is on its own a superbly crafted film that, though it may tell a tale some may be familiar with, will nonetheless be many viewers' first exposure to all the film(s) and novel have to offer.

The film tells the story of Owen, a bullied kid who lives at home with his mother, who recently separated from his father.  They live in an apartment complex in New Mexico, and he spends a lot of time on his own, either in his room, or on the playground in the courtyard, sitting in the snow imagining his revenge on his tormentor at school, who derisively calls him "little girl."  He spies a girl moving into the complex one night from his window, and things move from there, with them gradually growing closer despite Abby's insistence that they "can't be friends."  Owen undoubtedly finds Abby a bit odd - she smells funny, never wears any shoes, and solves his Rubick's Cube in a day - but he seems to be inexplicably drawn to her as well.  Later in the film, we learn a lot more about Abby, and a little more about Owen as well, especially in his relationship to what Abby is and his need to be protected.

What struck me most as I watched the film almost three weeks ago in Toronto was the overall tonal shift Reeves made in transporting the film's setting from Sweden to New Mexico.  The cinematography is certainly more stylized, with a much darker lighting set-up than I expected, and that leads to the film feeling much more sinister in its implications.  Toward the end of the film, the relationship between Abby and Owen is much heavier than the one shared in the original by Oskar and Eli.  This has to a lot to do with some added nastiness about the actual nature of killing people and drinking their blood than we've seen before.  In a particularly memorable change in sequence, Abby's reveal to Owen features a full-on attack scene that poses questions about what exactly constitutes a monster, and the morals faced when you learn someone you are close with may be something entirely different than what you imagined.

But the surprises don't end with the simple additions of gorier scenes and different kills, although one such sequence does have a rather fantastic camera maneuver in it as we are stuck in a car that is crashing over a snow-filled bank off the road.  The film also offers some fantastic performances by its young cast members, who are full-fledged actors, and not mere "child actors."  Chloe Moretz once again proves she is every bit as amazing as she has been hyped to be, and Kodi Smit-McPhee is no slouch either.  As Abby and Owen, they are every bit the onscreen pair as Kare Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson were in Tomas Alfredson's film.  There is certainly something sweet and endearing going on that is conveyed even through the very thick, sad atmosphere brought to the film by their adult counterparts.  They are the perfect balance between knowing adulthood and ignorant youth, and perfectly show us a couple of children who are, literally and figuratively, old before their time.  I haven't even gone into the performances by Richard Curtis and Elias Koteas at all, and they were fantastic as usual.

The film drew me in with its similarities and by the end it left me in the same sense of wonder and suspense I had when I finished LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, which I will make no secret of being my absolute favorite film of 2008.  This is no small feat, and it's one that Matt Reeves pulls off by being unwaveringly faithful to the source material while still taking stylistic risks that American audiences may not necessarily be prepared for, and which serve to form additional layers of depth to a film many people already enjoyed in its first adaptation.  Think of it like a companion piece about the same people and with the same themes and tones, but with slightly different viewpoints.  It really is quite fun and interesting in its own right.

I also want to single out the score by composer extraordinaire Michael Giacchino, that demonstrates a very nimble approach to scoring a film of this nature, which could come off as a very, very heavy-handed experience.  Instead, he toys with creepy choirs while never going full-blown "HEY!  THIS IS SCARY!!!" style, and he never rubs anything in for too long or keeps a theme going far past the time the music should have died down.  Like his amazing overture at the end of CLOVERFIELD - notable because it was the only score in the film, over the end credits - he has given us a series of compositions that perfectly evoke mood and theme while never intruding upon the space the film needs to properly breathe.

Of course, I could go on and on about the many, many similarities between LET ME IN and its inspiration, but that's not what I want to do.  You can surely find that out there on any number of straight-up review and fan sites, and most of them will probably tell you it's not as good as LET THE RIGHT ONE IN and not to bother.  But I just can't do that.  LET ME IN is its own thing, and it doesn't deserve to be diminished in a climate that produces untold hours of absolute dreck every single week.  To say that something isn't as good as something that is near-perfect is to say absolutely nothing about it.  But to perhaps show how it made me think and react, which I hope to have done here, is to encourage others to give it a chance.  It may make a believer out of you that all remakes aren't necessarily bad.  After all, there were how many versions of the Dracula story in the past century?  And at least a dozen of them are more than worthwhile.  Regardless of all that, LET ME IN remains the tender, horrific and very poignant vampire film that LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is, and that means that it's totally unlike any other film to come out of the current vampire craze.

Of Fleshy Blobs and Bio-Ethics: SPLICE (2010)

Thankfully, there's Canada.

Without their particular brand of crazy, I don't know where the sci-fi/horror genre would be.  Sure, there are the French, but that's another thing altogether.  No, the Canadians have had this market cornered for decades now, with David Cronenberg's body horror oeuvre being most prominent, and now we have SPLICE, directed by CUBE mastermind Vincenzo Natali.

SPLICE follows superstar geneticists Elsa and Clive (a terrific Sarah Polley and Adrian Brody), who are also a happy couple, and their attempts to splice a new creature together and track down an enzyme that is a gateway for all kinds of cures.  So, we have Fred and Ginger, two slug-like organisms who are apparently far more complex creatures, who bond ("imprint") with one another, and who are extremely successful at producing the protein that the pharmaceutical company is looking for.

After this success, Elsa and Clive want to move on to human splicing - the next logical step - but are told no by their big-pharma employers, who want them to shut down their operation and attempt to synthesize the protein now, so they can start making some money off of their years of research.  And of course, Elsa and Clive ignore all of this ad create the thing anyway, "just to know that they can."  Things are never as simple as they seem in these movies, and inevitably, they decide to put off destroying their creation, and stuff eventually goes very, very wrong.

And then the film becomes absolutely, thrillingly insane.  I mean it: crazy.

After the initial shocks of the experiment - the premature birth, the rapid development of the creature, their fear of its potentially deadly abilities - Clive and Elsa decide to keep it, especially once Elsa becomes attached to it, and gives it a name, Dren, which is significant ("nerd" backwards) in that it stems from a discovery she makes while bonding with "her."

The decision to assign a gender to Dren is a significant one, because it fuels a lot of the most intriguing questions the film raises.  It also makes complete sense, given the fact that during one of the most amazing sequences, while dancing with Dren, Clive notices Elsa's features in her, leading to the realization that the human DNA spliced into her was not some random donor, but was in fact her own way of having a child (a subject brought up by Clive, but which disinterested Elsa, perhaps as not being "enough" for her).  This realization is where the film completely changes into something profoundly interesting, with Dren developing self-awareness, drawing conclusions about relationships, and, of course, typical adolescent urges.

The resulting final hour of the film is packed with questions and ideas about bio-ethics, relationship dynamics, greed, species and gender identities, sexual ethics and so much more it's mind-boggling.  I was so breathless by the time I left the theater that I felt like I had just run a marathon (the way I feel after watching Cronenberg's films, too).

Now, I'm not going to spoil much of anything for you, but I will give this piece of information:  the relationship between Dren and Clive sets all of this in motion, and it's one of those oddly erotic moments that you're quite simply unsure of at the time.  The model and sometimes actress Delphine Chaneac was no doubt chosen to play the oddly attractive Dren (from the waste up, at least) because the creature is supposed to have some sort of sex appeal.  The film thrives on our identification with this thing as a humanoid.  It totally works, too, because throughout the narrative, the film consistently plays with who the audience identifies with based on their relationship and reactions toward Dren.

The six or seven college kids behind me hated it.  They weren't kids, just immature adults.  SPLICE is not a movie for someone who is just looking for a big dumb horror flick (which is acceptable, too), and it certainly is not anything like what you would expect.  It is, however, excellent, and then you even get the traditional final reel freak-out horrorshow to top it all of.  It's nothing short of brilliant, and easily one of the best films I've seen this year.

George A. Romero's SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD

It seems that with each new installment of his "Dead" films, Romero further solidifies his reputation as the king of so-called "serious" zombie cinema.  He is more focused than ever on his life's work and his humanist message.  His films have always had a political bent to them, but he seems more conscious of this than ever with his previous film DIARY OF THE DEAD and his new epic, SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD.  The main difference is that he's lost a bit of his cynicism regarding the human race - there's a streak of actual hope in his recent efforts, and his focus (particularly since DAY OF THE DEAD) on the possibility that the undead might have their old memories lurking underneath all that decaying flesh and insatiable hunger has really lent itself to the morality at play in the whole "should we kill them or wait to find a cure" conundrum that sits at the heart of all standalone zombie films (as if no one had ever seen a zombie movie before).  In this regard, he's become a storyteller of great empathy, somewhat akin to a latter-day, splatter-centric and less technically masterful Kurosawa, who sees the potential in humanity through all its ugliness.

I've been following and writing about Romero's series for quite some time now, and I'm sorry to say it, but this film is most certainly the beginning of the end.  SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD is Romero's sixth zombie film, and again the odds are on the dead overrunning the living.  SURVIVAL marks two major departures for the director, as well as the series:  it's essentially a take on the Western (a showdown between two feuding families on an island over what to do with the dead forms the central conflict of the piece), and it features a character from another film in the series, Sarge Crocket, the National Guardsman who hijacks the protagonists' RV in DIARY.

This really opens up the universe of the series, and fulfills the hopes (somewhat) of late film-theorist Robin Wood, who wrote of DIARY that he hopes to see characters from that film populate later films, though he was speaking mostly in the context of the militant blacks who had taken over the town and supplied the kids with a lot of the stuff that got ripped off by the National Guard.  I agree, that would be one of the more interesting sets of people to make a zombie movie about, especially in Romero's super-charged politically relevant mythology.

The plot is pretty basic - in an Earp/McLaury scenario, the island two families of Irish immigrants live on isn't big enough for the both of them, so one has to go.  Forced off the island, Patrick O'Flynn takes to ripping off people for passage via boat to the island, which is apparently unknown to anyone who doesn't live in the area.  Sarge and the crew he ends up with encounter O'Flynn while trying to flee the mainland, and end up bringing him back to the island.  The morality play picks up and goes from there, ultimately ending in a bloodbath, but one that has some real ramifications for where the series goes in the future (Romero has said he only wants to do one more, but we'll see if that's adhered to, or not), particularly in regard to the undead's apparent ability to remember their family members, though this ends with tragic consequences.

SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD has been heralded as a let-down by both non-fans and admirers of Romero, but really it's not the bore-fest it's been purported to be.  Like most Romero films, there's a healthy layer of cheese that covers everything, from the over-the-top kills and the self-important dialogue (a way of interpreting other "end of the world" films' overwrought mental masturbation, in my opinion, and often bad on purpose), but none of this should be a surprise to anyone who's followed the director's films since CREEPSHOW.

He's a pulp-infused storyteller, more akin to a schlocky EC comic than anything cerebral and "intellectually engaging" on traditional levels.  Part of the pleasure of watching SURVIVAL is seeing how Romero blends and synthesizes genre, undermines his own supposed legacy, and continues building upon both at the same time.  It may well be the weakest of the "Dead" series, but when you're discussing any horror movie in the same breath as NIGHT, DAWN or the under-appreciated DAY OF THE DEAD, that's not exactly saying anything revolutionary in thought.  Compared to the original three films, almost all horror films are completely inferior, and not just those featuring the beloved lumbering undead.

Edit - 5/28/10 3:10 PM:
Check out this interview with Romero that's really quite interesting.

Underrated: SPARTAN

David Mamet's 2004 thriller SPARTAN is so underrated it might be the least-seen absolutely amazing movie I can think of.  In hyperbole, for every 20 people I ask about it, maybe one or two even knows what I'm talking about.  Seriously, though, the people who have seen SPARTAN know it is one of the most amazing achievements in a stellar career few will ever rival.

The film, like much of Mamet's work, assumes a lot of its audience.  For example, it doesn't explain every single plot point, instead opting to trust the audience to follow events and use context to extrapolate what's happening.  This is a rarity in most Hollywood-produced films, and SPARTAN isn't a film where nothing happens that needs explanation, either.  It's a twisted, convoluted road to travel down, full of red herrings and double-crosses; trade-mark Mamet.

The plot involves a black ops agent, Scott, played by Val Kilmer riding his mid-decade come-back, who is given the task of finding the daughter of a high-level government official.  Not once in the first thirty minutes is it even clear whose daughter it is, but when talk of the Secret Service enters the picture, it's pretty clear who is at stake.  That's the trust in the audience it has, not overt or explicit, but enough information to have a full grasp of the situation, as long as one is willing to think about things the same way characters are being asked to in order to make conclusions.

The film is full of amazing performances.  Here, Ed O'Neill steals the show.

The cast is filled with a ton of fine actors, some Mamet regulars, like William H. Macy, and others who I wish did more work with the director, like Ed O'Neill, who steals early scenes in a too-little yet just right role, and Kilmer himself, who probably hadn't turned in a performance this good since he played Jim Morrison for Oliver Stone.  Also of note is a pre-fame Kristen Bell as the kidnapped girl. 

The film's visual style is a hybrid of genres, with lush reds and cool blues dominating almost every frame.

Music, cinematography - fantastic.  The film is awash in hues of reds and blues, creating a hybrid visual aesthetic that's somewhere between spy thriller and film noir.  The world Kilmer's spy inhabits is filled with shady deals and slimy characters, after all.  The music emphasises the blending of genres, with horn parts and staccato drums throughout, never quite settling into which mode it wants to be in, and is really a great score when put with the imagery.

The audience is involved in the mystery itself thanks to great writing, and a superb trust in the audience.

I love little things about the dialogue.  Something about everyone asking, over and over, "Where's the girl?" to anyone who may have remotely been involved or know anything has a kind of charm to it; a poetry of phrasing and emphasis, maybe.  And then there's the scene where, trekking through the last known wherabouts of the girl at a club and Kilmer and Derek Luke interrogate a suspect in an alley behind the place.  There is a brief tussle with Kilmer breaking the guy's arm. 

Scott : (to Luke) Take out your knife. (to suspect) Where's the girl, Jerry?  (no answer; to Luke) Take his eye out.  (brief pause, Derek Luke looks at him unbelieving) You bet your life.

This is intense stuff, and much of the action in the film is handled in conjunction with people talking, something Mamet is known for.  The thrill of the language is just a big as that of the events happening onscreen, and propels the film into the outer spheres and makes it into the magical wonder that it is.  If you still haven't seen SPARTAN, do so.  I guarantee one of the most rewarding film experiences of the last decade, if not ever.

Underrated: DICK TRACY

Warren Beatty's 1990 film of DICK TRACY gets a bad rap. Personally, I think it's fantastic. I don't think I've ever seen a film that does such justice to its comic-strip origins. Even that other great, unjustly maligned comic-strip film, Robert Altman's POPEYE, doesn't come close to matching the adherence of style to DICK TRACY. But rather than delve into the various criticisms of the film, I want simply to point out why it's great, and why I love the film so much.

DICK TRACY is a joy to look at. Filmed in high contrast primary colors (an attempt to recreate the comic's original four-color printing process), there is a vibrancy not regularly seen in the palette of a typical noir. And believe me, despite its cartoonish look, this film is noir through and through. Tracy is a little more black and white than most leads in films noir, but the situations he gets himself into and the general feel of the film make for an interesting take on the genre. Hell, if anyone doesn't get absolute thrills at Madonna's take on Breathless Mahoney/The Blank - one of my favorite femme fatales - they probably aren't alive.

Taking seminal characters from the comic strip - Flat Top and Big Boy, prominently - writers Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. tell the story of crime boss Big Boy Caprice's attempted takeover of the city and the battle Tracy faces in a city filled to the brim with henchmen. And filled to the brim it is, as producer/director/star Beatty, a huge fan of the strip, decided to put in as many of the series's signature villains as possible in case a sequel never got made (which it sadly didn't.) The result is a bit of an overcrowded cast and an underdeveloped plot, I'll admit, but I won't admit that this negates the feel of the strip the film achieved.

A rogue's gallery: Flattop, Itchy, "Breathless" Mahoney, Big Boy Caprice, and The Stooge

The music is also a highpoint, as Stephen Sondheim wrote one of my favorite "period" songs ever in a modern film: "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)." It's perfect in just about every way, and the montage over which it plays is amazing as well. I'm such a little girl for little sequences like this.

I love the relationship between Tess Trueheart and Tracy, and the development of The Kid's role in their family dynamic. I also love the little nods to the strip here and there, from the opening sequence with the rescue of The Kid from The Tramp, straight through to the use of the two-way wrist radio (an invention of Gould's that served as an early inspiration for cell phones.) And the decision to set it in the period of the strip's classic run rather than the more current takes made the art direction stand out even more.

Going back to Tess Trueheart for a moment, I just want to say that I think it's criminal that Glenne Headly never broke bigger than she did. Sure, she has had major roles (notably in DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS), but someone of her talent should be well-known, not relegated to small roles in GREY'S ANATOMY and the upcoming KIT KITTREDGE movie. Anyone who sees this movie and doesn't automatically fall head-over-heels in love with Tess Trueheart really doesn't get it. She's the heart that keeps everything together, and Glenne provides a huge performance with what she's given.

The bright, blown-out primary colors took a knocking at the time, but today look fantastic.

I think the real problem everyone had with DICK TRACY was that it was a bit ahead of its time. It came out about a decade too soon, before we really started analyzing and thinking about the importance of artifice in film. The prominence of style as a form of narrative itself really wasn't even considered heavily in mainstream film criticism (academics, certainly) until the 90's (despite the style-over-substance movement in France a la Luc Besson's LA FEMME NIKITA.) Maybe it's time to think about what DICK TRACY is and where it fits into film history. I, for one, would be completely down with a re-evaluation of comic strip movies that have gotten a raw deal. Seriously, go back and watch DICK TRACY again and don't enjoy the hell out of it on its own terms. Take no pretense other than it is a comic strip come to life. Go ahead, I dare you.

Underrated: Ang Lee's HULK

Back in 2003, Ang Lee unleashed his film HULK on unsuspecting comic book lovers everywhere. While the film is a successful and highly personal and intimate drama about childhood trauma and its manifestation during adulthood, fans of the comic book, The Incredible Hulk, cried foul, and dissed the film almost unanimously, and continue to do so to this day. The film was too "boring" and didn't feature enough of the trademark "Hulk SMAAAASSSSH!!!" that fans were expecting. To be fair to the fans, it certainly was not an action-packed extravaganza, though this gripe is somewhat missing the point. By making a melodrama centered around comic book characters, rather than a comic book movie with hints of melodrama, Lee successfully transformed the "comic book movie" into a full-fledged movie, something that didn't need to be preceded by the term "comic book."

The importance of the story's drama to the film should come as no surprise to anyone the least bit familiar with Ang Lee's work, namely SENSE AND SENSIBILITY and THE ICE STORM, which are arguably his two best films. The traumatic events that Bruce Banner faced as a child that feed into his rage once exposed to nano-radiation make much more sense when one considers the source of the film (Ang Lee) and his previous emphasis on family dramas, even when dealing with large-scale conflicts like the American Civil War in RIDE WITH THE DEVIL or ancient Chinese mythology in CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON. What is surprising is the extent to which Banner's background is explicitly played out in the film. Lee almost spells out the entire reasoning for his manifestation as the Hulk, and it leaves little up in the air, which admittedly is a major draw in the comic book form. And that maybe marks the major departure for Lee from the comic - and thus hints at the disconnect the film really seems to have with fans.

The Incredible Hulk, at least early on, was a Jekyll and Hyde story, with Bruce Banner not knowing he was changing, and not being able to remember the things he did when he was Hulk. This all changed fairly quickly, and Hulk eventually became intelligent during the Peter David years. To my knowledge, the personal history of Bruce Banner never played much into the story outside of those events that were already present when he first transformed: his relationship with Betty Ross, his reputation as a scientist, etc. What Lee does with HULK, though, is move as much of this mythology into his own private universe he has created as a filmmaker, transforming the "Hulk Smash" mythos into a fairly adult take on reconciling differences between desires and commitments.

Betty Ross is the emotional center for Bruce, and her father, General "Thunderbolt" Ross, provides the biggest obstacle for Bruce both as her father who disapproves of him, and as the military commander who is most interested in bringing the Hulk down. Bruce's attempts to stay with Betty form the majority of the plot, and his presence as the Hulk take place mostly while trying to defend her or make sure she is not harmed. Despite this, he is an enemy of her father, and in the film's final confrontation must be removed from her life, either voluntarily or against his will. The result is devastating as a character film, and ranks with Lee's other films quite easily.

Hulk's emotional core is constantly on display. His rage is obviously affected by Betty's presence.

On top of this, Lee brought some amazing innovations to the screen, not the least of which were the special effects used to create the Hulk courtesy of ILM. A lot of criticism leveled at HULK was the cartoonish look of its effects. This is ludicrous to me. Just look at any screenshot and you can see the level of detail that went into producing the Hulk onscreen. The range of emotion his face shows, the sweat and dirt that cling to his body, even the transformations look amazing, and of course they're not completely realistic, but it shouldn't be. We're talking about an average guy who turns green and grows to 9 ft. tall, and then gets bigger as his rage builds. There's absolutely nothing realistic about it. Perhaps one of the most impressive scenes is when the Hulk is in San Francisco, just having run from the desert in Nevada to reunite with/rescue Betty, he is standing alone, surrounded by helicopters and army vehicles, and sees his love for the first time. Anyone who says this isn't impressive effects work is out of their minds.

For once, the CGI in a movie looks like it actually belongs in the environment it's supposed to be in. If that's cartoonish, I don't know what could possibly be expected as realism. Lee's film used effects to create a character - fully fleshed out and living - instead of a caricature, and it's been the subject of debate ever since. I just don't get it. Just look at the sub-par CG work on films like SPIDER-MAN and SPIDER-MAN 2, and you'll see what I'm getting at.

The hatred for Lee's movie ran so deep that fans out and out demanded that another film be made, focusing on action and smashing than on characters and story. As of this year, they have their wish, as THE INCREDIBLE HULK, starring Edward Norton and directed by Louis Leterier, a veteran action director of THE TRANSPORTER series and UNLEASHED, comes out this summer. The trailer is lackluster, and the story looks to be almost nonexistent. Even the Hulk himself pales in comparison to what was achieved by ILM for HULK way back in 2003. The new animation is too shiny, is disproportionate, and under-developed. Give me Ang Lee's film any day. It may be the most mature comic book movie ever made.

A side-by-side comparison of the new and old renderings.
Personally, I feel Lee's is much more representative of a character.