Let Me In is a violent vampire horror-drama that centers on a desperate bond that forms between two lonely kids, one of whom is a vampire. Directed by Matt Reeves, it is an American adaptation of a better-crafted Swedish movie called Let the Right One In (2008). A near scene-for-scene remake, the major differences are that the pace is sped up, and the violence — while about equal in amount — is staged in ways that are less disturbing. The original had an intriguing story and was one of the best-reviewed movies of the year. Still, North American audiences aren’t generally interested in foreign movies, and are turned off by the idea of reading subtitles, so an American remake seemed unavoidable.
Let Me In takes place during the Reagan years, before MSN and Facebook chat, when infatuated young persons had to communicate by Morse Code through an apartment wall. The movie focuses on Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee), an emotionally isolated 12-year-old. He befriends his new neighbour Abby (Chloe Moretz), another lonely 12-year-old, and a vampire. Abby moves in late one night accompanied by a middle-aged man assumed to be her father (played by the always-underused Richard Jenkins) but the nature of their relationship is ambiguous.
Owen is instantly recognizable as the creepy kid in school thanks to his greasy, matted-down hair and proto-emo look. Despite his social maladaptation, during conversation he seems like a kid you could get along with. A sadistic bully and his cronies pick on him at school, and when he gets home he practices stabbing a tree, fantasizing about getting even. One night during one of his quixotic bouts, he and Abby meet.
Abby looks like a sweet girl, but because she is a vampire, she needs to feed on people to live. While she is capable of merciless violence, in the way Moretz plays the character there isn’t a hint of darkness to her. She also advises Owen on how to deal with the bully at school, who we learn is a victim of bullying himself, by his older, more sadistic brother.
The major shortcoming of this version of the movie is that it isn’t patient enough. In the original, Owen and Abby make contact because they are both isolated and alone. Through nightly conversation, their relationship evolves into a romantic one. In this movie, Owen and Abby form that bond almost immediately. Any scene of long conversation runs the danger of being too boring for some. Better to play it safe.
It’s important to note that while this is a “vampire movie,” it is not the kind of movie we normally associate with that term. There is nothing in common between Let Me In and the Twilight movies. Those movies use the idea of vampires as a device to steam up the screen in a romance-melodrama, while Let Me In is dead serious about its vampire. And while the movie may be about two 12-year-olds, it’s intended for mature audiences. When Abby tears out a jugular, I doubt too many will think it’s romantic.
Underneath it all, vampires or not, the filmmakers wanted to make a movie about masks. All the characters in the film wear a public face as a mask; only in private do they reveal their true face. Using the voyeuristic movie camera, we can see into the private lives of these characters. The filmmakers of Let Me In have imagined their characters, despite a couple of sweet faces, are concealing much more disturbing, grotesque faces.
