Let Me In: Press reviews

'Not as deep as the original, but certainly more of a crowdpleaser — and it's hard to imagine a more intelligent and well-crafted American horror being released this year. '

'Though it teases out the usual horror movie sensations of dread and anxiety and eyes-averted disgust, this movie also makes a direct and disarming play for affection, eliciting in viewers something akin to the awkward, resilient tenderness that is its subject.

''Let Me In' is yet another glossy Hollywood reworking of a classy European film. But – hold on to your hats - it's better than the original. Well, it had to happen some day...'

At Toronto - 'It's not the CGI that will win audiences over, but the great central performances from the two young actors. Plus the fact that – as in all the best examples of the genre – underneath the gore, the true story is about internal emotional conflict and the loneliness of being an outsider.'

'Rather good, extremely well performed horror movie'

'It's Moretz who runs away with the film, proving she's much more than a one-hit Hit–Girl with a suitably restrained and empathetic performance.'

'If we hadn't already seen it in Swedish, we'd probably be talking up Reeves' dark, gripping vampire remake – and its two lead performances – as something rather special. Actually, we're going to do that anyway.'

'After all the talk about the director, it's the performances of Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee that really linger'

'Surprisingly faithful to the mood of the previous film. It's a sensitive, atmo-spheric tale, with a suburban setting that would be cold and alienating even without any supernatural inhabitants. Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road) and Chloe Moretz (Kick-Ass) are quietly compelling'

'It isn't as magical as the Swedish effort — one of the best films of 2008 — but it isn't disastrous either'

'The result, though no less creepy than the Swedish film, mislays its lyricism and otherworldliness; what felt sorrowful now seems ponderous and almost bored'

'A very good film, slightly overpraised, has been remade as a slightly good film, very overpraised.'

'You'd do far better to track down the original Swedish version on DVD. It is slower, but much more original, and infinitely more moving.'

'What's missing is the alluring otherness of Let the Right One In. That film's brittle textures and haunted ambience seemed in some strange way to have sprung organically from the nation in which it was set. This remake, by contrast, smells of boardrooms and calculating machines.'

'The sombre, melancholy mood seems done with an applicator: a large swab of slow-tempo gloom in which the action high-points – the blood-draining murder in the park, the girl vampire's savaging of a nocturnal pedestrian – are presented with mechanised flairlessness.'