Let Me In, 2010.
Directed by Matt Reeves.
Starring Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Grace Moretz, Elias Koteas and Richard Jenkins.
SYNOPSIS:
It’s 1983 in the city of Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Owen, a bullied and lonely child, befriends the mysterious Abby, a young girl who has recently moved to the apartment complex in which Owen lives with his mother. As the friendship grows deeper, it soon becomes apparent that there might be much more to Abby that meets the eye, with her links to a spate of grisly murders in the city becoming ever clearer.
For years people have complained about how The Twilight Saga has ruined vampires, turning them from scary creatures of the night, into sparkly arseholes with stylish hair, and how The Twilight Saga ruined the romance genre, turning it into something resembling an abusive controlling relationship that its millions of fans don’t seem to find a bit sinister.
Well, what if I told you that there exists, a film with the same basic premise as Twilight, that doesn’t completely botch the whole idea of a supernatural romance? Enter the subject of today’s review the romantic horror Let Me In.
This film was met with derision upon its initial announcement, primarily due to its position as a remake of the Swedish film Let the Right One In (2008) adapted from the novel of the same name. However, don’t merely ignore this film because it’s a remake, because it’s quite possibly one of the best remakes, and one of the best vampire films out there.
In the leading roles we have Chloe Grace Moretz and Kodi Smit-Mcphee as Abby and Owen, both bringing their very best to their respective roles. Despite being very young at the time of the film’s making, they bring an air of believable maturity and world-weariness to their characters; both are lonely soul and both are desperate to find some form of companionship with a fellow outcast.
Let Me In also provides further demonstrations of how atrocious the storytelling and execution of the Twilight franchise was, by having near enough the same basic plot, yet portrayed by child actors and somehow feeling much more authentic and moving. You can believe that Owen and Abbey are in love, whereas the Twilight films feel about as romantic as a night of unending diarrhea.
The film is visually striking with numerous creative shots and careful framing choices, such as brilliantly executed single take of a masked killer’s botched attempt to murder and carjack an unsuspecting victim.
One visual choice that I want to talk about though is a very simple one – the choice to never allow the viewer to see the face of Owen’s mother, who always shot from the waist or lying face down with a wine bottle nearby. I feel that by obscuring her face, it perfectly captures the sense of abandonment or negligence that Owen’s mother treats him with, too focused on her own problems in divorcing his father to notice the deeply lonely and unhappy life of her son.
Now the film is also a horror film, and while it does have various gruesome scenes of people being brutally murdered or having their blood sucked through gruesome bites to the throat, they aren’t the scariest or most difficult scenes to watch.
No, in my view the most uncomfortable scenes to me are the scenes in which we see young Owen being bullied at school. These scenes are brilliantly executed and acted, making you truly feel the humiliation and pain that Owen feels as his bullies adopt various increasingly sadistic ways to torment him. A brutal sequence in which Owen is jumped in a school locker room is particular heartbreaking, and one which I found myself looking away from the screen I felt so uncomfortable.
Let Me In is a beautiful film with outstanding central performances from two immensely talented young actors and brilliant direction, aided with a carefully crafted and distinctive visual style. Most importantly, Let Me In manages to create a moving and convincing supernatural love story, all without having to pad its runtime with shots of a sparkling vampire or a shirtless werewolf.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Graeme Robertson
Originally published October 28, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
