Ryan McNeil
There’s few feelings in life that hurt as badly as being bullied. It comes for no reason, it’s seemingly omnipresent, and it can make just walking out the front door a task that requires the utmost courage. For those who are picked on, nothing in life is desired more than for it all to stop.
They want a protector. They dream of it…they pray for it…
They invite it.
LET ME IN takes place in New Mexico in the early 80’s. Owen (Kodi Smit McPhee) is a 12-year old boy with no friends, and complacent parents. He is bullied mercilessly at school and only takes solace by imagining one day getting his revenge (not like he really stands a chance mind you). Owen lives in an unspectacular apartment complex, and one day in the dead of winter a pair of mysterious strangers movie into the apartment next door. They are a father (Richard Jenkins) and a curious girl about Owen’s age named Abby (Chloe Moretz).
Owen continually runs into Abby all alone evenings at the apartment playground, and she seems to understand him far better than his absentee parents…and light years more than his abusive schoolmates. The two share a connection, one that keeps them coming back to the jungle gym night after night even though they don’t really know much about each other.
With Owen, what you see is what you get, but with Abby it’s much more. Owen doesn’t understand why Abby doesn’t so to his school, or why he never sees her around in the daytime at all. He has no clue that her “father” goes out night after night, and kills innocent victims for their blood, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. And he doesn’t know that Abby is much older than her 12-year-old frame suggests, since Abby is a vampire.
LET ME IN is a quietly vicious story of a timid friendship. Owen stands in for many of us who grew up as awkward loners. Kodi Smit McPhee embodies him perfectly – his wanting, his desperation, and especially his sadness. As the third act begins, Owen makes a frightened phone call to his father and asks a very direct question: “Is evil real?”. It’s one of the most frightened and honest moments you’ll see in a movie, and McPhee deserves top marks for such a heartbreaking bit of acting.
Like Owen, many of us found ourselves with very few friends, the target of overcompensating bullies, and not understanding what it was about ourselves that screamed “bullseye”. Like him, the best part of our day was when we got home and could escape into our own imagination and solitude. If only we too could meet someone like Abby. Someone with Chloe Moretz’s wholesome smile. That person who could reach out to us with no agenda, and mean it.
Abby of course isn’t all sugar and spice, and when the darkness inside of her is let loose the movie earns its bloody stripes. When Abby feeds, it’s animalistic and frightening. LET ME IN isn’t interested in playing up the romantic lore of a vampire while forsaking a vampire’s monstrous nature, and the fact that all this carnage is caused by such a seemingly young person makes it all that much more unsettling.
And if that’s not enough gruesomeness for you, there’s also the fate of her protective handler and the fate of a victim that gets away to endure. Director Matt Reeves allows these moments to play: he doesn’t use quick cutting techniques, and instead holds our heads with two hands and makes us watch.
The entire film is painted in gentle brushstrokes, which is what helps it succeed. It’s patient, and isn’t interested in revealing its hand too quickly. It’s filled with quiet moments of unease, like when it instills in us the uncomfortable feeling of hearing a garbled argument through a wall that’s just too thin. And as Abby and Owen walk further and further down the path of their vulnerable friendship, they are guided by a Michael Giacchino score that encapsulates everything they don’t say perfectly.
While I’d like to leave it out, I suppose I can’t post this review without answering the inevitable question: Is LET ME IN as good as LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, the Swedish film on which it is based. The answer is “no”. Does that mean its a bad film and not worth seeing at all? The answer to that also is “no”.
LET ME IN wants to tell this story in an ever-so-slightly different way, and that’s not a bad thing. It has retained the original’s haunting quality, its stillness, its tenderness, and its violence. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN was one of the best films the last decade had to offer, and just because this domestic take on it doesn’t completely measure up, it also doesn’t mean that the film fails..