Let the Right One In

Its familiar elements are ordered and executed with above-average intelligence and polish, enough that you can overlook a couple of gaping coincidences that keep the plot moving. Most important is its strong cast.

This show will not equal the artistic impact of the original film, but it retains its meditative qualities while upping the horror and the narrative intrigue, and it may be the case that it attracts more American viewers in the end.

The show is most interesting when the kids are at the center; each has what the other needs. Foreman and Baez are genuine and touching, and it’s easy to invest in their story, with fingers crossed for a good outcome.

Let The Right One In is a bit uneven, mainly because some stories are less interesting than others, even if they’ll all get connected somehow by the end of the season. We just want to see how Mark and Ellie manage Ellie’s unusual life, and we want to see more of that as the show goes on.

Read the book and see both movies first. Once you know the story and accept that this isn’t definitive, its complementary merits have some value, even if the show doesn’t offer the devastating variations on a fertile theme that I would have hoped for.

Thanks to a raft of solid performances and some promising possible paths forward, there’s reason to believe that things may yet grow more intense and bizarre. It’s hard to shake the nagging feeling, though, that Hinderaker’s small-screen remake is too defanged for its own good.

Suffers from the same ailment of needless elongation due to a surfeit of subplots padding the original text. A feature’s worth of story cannot always be made to fill a serial run time, but it seems that that’s not going to stop anyone from trying.

his started as a novel of the same name, then became an excellent Swedish film before the American version Let Me In. Now Showtime has released this series with several changes. It's set in modern day New York and the primary cast members are Hispanic or Black. There are several new subplots that just clutter things up. Demian Bichir plays the beleaguered father of a 12-year-old who's been turned into a vampire. He struggles to keep her supplied with blood, while trying to maintain some normalcy in their lives. There is the troubled next door boy to be befriended, but there's a whole new story about another family searching for cure and even a 3rd story about evil drug dealers. Ultimately, when the narrative sticks to the basic premise, it's interesting, but the side stories water down the effect and there's virtually no tension. Overall, there are some successful elements, but the ultimate outcome is uneven and lacking punch. It must be said that the chimpanzees look incredibly fake,

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]