Just been to see 'Let Me In' this very day. First of all, it wasn't as good as the Swedish original and I take everything back about what I said regarding Kodi Smit-McPhee not looking thin and hungry enough in 'The Road'! In 'Let Me In' the scene were he's being bullied in the pool locker room confirmed that boy is built like a beanpole! Then again, his thin appearance is typical of a gangly 14 year old I suppose.
Somehow this film just didn't capture the atmospheric menace as well as the original despite having the girl vampire take on a frightening appearance, complete with weird eyes, whenever she sucked blood. The part of the woman she attacked and turned into a vampire and who burned in the hospital wasn't dealt with sufficiently. In the original, the woman's plight was much more highlighted so that the audience could even feel sympathy for her.
As I predicted Kodi was not going to appear on screen wearing neat white undies in his bedroom like his Swedish counterpart. Not even shorts but trousers! Jeeez. I even half expected, knowing American prudity, that Kodi would be thrown into the pool fully dressed. However, they did concede to put him into shorts for that dramatic scene. Other than that, this Hollywood attempt was a good effort in maintaining the horror and tension but just seemed to fall a little short of 'Let The Right One In', I thought. Both films ended the same way so that in both cases I was left with the nagging worry that the boy was going to eventually end up as an adult dogsbody for Abby.
Kodi's performance was very good as the put upon kid suffering at the hands of the bullies and portraying his tender relationship with Abby. I can easily award him 8 stars. The film: 6 stars.

PS You know what? I've forgotten what Kodi's character was called. Was he called Oskar like in the original?

I saw this movie in October when is released in France and I very liked the play of Kodi in part of Owen. He is very moving and disturbing even ambiguous in this part but he is a very good australian young actor which I saw also in part of Raymond in Romulus, my Father and in part of boy in The Road. I hope now to see him in Matching Jack with Tom RUSSELL.