Unlike many remakes, Let Me In is not a bad film, far from it. But its existence is fairly pointless (much like other recent remakes such as Quarantine, the unneeded remake of Rec), with characters and themes all being tackled in the same way as the original and not really attempting anything radically different. The only two differences that crop up are the obvious language differences and the acting.
Let Me In lacks the atmosphere of the original with the melodrama being more evident in the remake and over fraught, something that eats away at the mysteriously sinister nature of the characters/relationships. The lead actors are not bad in any sense, but appear average when compared with the otherworldliness of the leads from Let The Right One In. They simply do not have the same chemistry or depth.
If viewed alone, Let Me In would have been a great film, but with the Swedish version having beaten the Hollywood edition to the punch, this film comes across as lacking and merely rolls along, always slightly missing out on the magic of Let The Right One In.
Pulling strings from classics such as The Wicker Man and Don’t Look Now, Wakewood toils with a married couple who recently lost their daughter and move to the British countryside village of Wakewood.
As events progress and the mystical underbelly of Wakewood is revealed, our appetite for the sinister is fed and things evolve to involve sacrificial rituals, resurrection, creepy villages and plenty of bloody murder.
Whether director David Keating has made the effort to direct Wakewood to give it a slight hammer horror amateurish atmosphere, or simply lacks the talent is not 100% clear as the direction is sometimes uneven and doesn’t manage to achieve a balanced style throughout. However, the use of abrupt zoom-ins add to the classic horror feel and the plot weaves along in similar clichéd aplomb.
Wakewood makes for a vaguely entertaining yarn, but the lack of originality is hard to overlook even with the rather entertaining finale.
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