When Your Light's Right, Your Night's Bright

Let Me In (2010)
directed by Matt Reeves
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
seen on the screen at Loews Waterfront 22

Ugh. It takes Matt Reeves half an hour to convince his cinematographer to focus the camera, and once he does I regretted it. Why did I bother to see a remake of a movie I love as much as Let the Right One In? Because I wanted to see a story about childhood set in Los Alamos, a city in a state that could look every bit as beautiful as The Spirit of the Beehive and still be sad and lonely. Reeves makes New Mexico look like Sweden, or anywhere with a parking lot, darkness, and snow. It's how you might begin to talk about his wrong calls.

Eli was better cast than Abby because Abby looks like a movie star. There's no question she's a girl, in spite of what she says. There's no question of the background of "The Father" this time around, although there should be. Owen, unlike Oskar, lives in an apartment complex full of vibrant twenty-somethings; drab exteriors aside, the sets have nothing in common except to be a fence for neighbors. And, oh, how Reeves wastes Cara Buono, going so far as to cut off her head, Peanuts-like; Don Draper taking advantage of that beauty is enough, but two men is more than I can bear.

So let me be serious for a moment. In the scene in the pool, Eli keeps the blood away from Oskar. But Owen comes up covered in gore, and without that necessary tenderness, Let Me In is simply a study in the good press you can get for a movie with child actors - protection against the bad reviews that Let Me In deserves.