Let me In

There is a part of me that thinks I need to create a post of Kyle Movie Rules, and link to it instead of restating certain things for any new potential reader. Let The Right One In, which is the foreign film on which this film is based, is an amazing drama about a young vampire girl. I feel like the movie is looked at as more amazing in this Twilight world because of how unsexy it is made to be. That is not to say the movie is not amazing, but I think it got elevated by being completely different. That being said, a Kyle Movie Rule is that you never base your opinion of a remake on your feeling towards the original. I hope to never once in a review say "The Original was better." It may seem like an impossible task, but I feel it is important not to judge a movie based on the source material. I believe it is a fundamental right of every movie to be viewed without those preconceived notions on what a movie is supposed to be. Matt Reeves, the director of the oft debated (in my social circle) Cloverfield, deserved me coming in fresh and I always want to deliver, so it was with fresh eyes that I viewed Let me In.

Owen(Kodi Smit-Mcphee) is a bullied young man without a great family life (his mother is never shown to us full faced). He loves to eat candy, but is not allowed to and he does not have a single friend. he also has dark dark fantasies of stabbing women to death while wearing a mask and he spies on his neighbors having sex or working out. When he gets new neighbors, he appears immediately intrigued by the young girl Abby(Chloe Moretz). When Owen and Abby meet, Abby tells him straight up that they cannot be friends, but the bond is formed regardless. Abby lives with a man with secrets who kills people and drains their blood. Why does he do that? Well, Abby is a vampire. She is a 12 year old vampire and the man is her...well we do not really know. Abby needs the blood to not look and smell like death. The bond between Owen and Abby grows exponentially quickly and Abby fears it is only a matter of time he find out. When the man has an accident during one of his hopeful kills, the cops start showing up and asking questions and Abby's life starts to unravel and her secret becomes clear to Owen.

This will be the only comparison I make between the original and the remake: Whereas Let the Right one In was a dramatic film with horror aspects, Let me In is a horror film with dramatic aspects. Let me In is a masterful American horror film. It takes the basic premise of Let the Right One In and gives it an American wash set to the tune of horror, or suspense. There is definitely enough gore to please those suffering from a need for bloodlust, but the movie is not drenched in gore. Matt Reeves, who did such a great job building suspense and tension surrounding the monster in Cloverfield, has done it again here. There are entire scenes where the tension builds so insanely that I felt like I was being suffocated. He delivers a whopper of a scene when the caretaker of Abby has his accident and the pay off after the tension is exactly perfect. I am very impressed by Matt Reeves and think he is going to have a lot of great work in the genre of horror for a long time. He understands where the place for gore is and he understands how, at times, what we do not see can be much more scary than what we do see. He plays with light and dark in a wonderfully frightful way.

The film really hinges on the two young performers and how they react to each other and the kids do solid work. I am not sure they had the kind of chemistry I would have liked, but they both sold the film and they were good enough together to buy the premise of the film. Mcphee is a nice young actor, but I am not sure if he can succeed in anything where he is not supposed to be sad. he just has the perfect look for this type of movie, but he does definitely act well enough to gain our sympathy from the beginning of the film and goes through enough of a transition to buy the drastic switch in the character in a particularly brutal moment. Moretz is a young, very gifted actress I hope has a long and healthy career. She fills Abby with such a heartbreaking sadness that I kept wondering what Abby had been through in all of her years as a vampire. I kept waiting for her to want to be staked or set on fire. For an actress who has done a few things where her characters are so full of life, it was quite jarring to see this. She has always played little girls with an edge, but this was just such a difference in tone.

Let me In kept my attention, had me gasping for air and delivered on every moment of tension in an interesting way. I still think maybe the relationship between the two leads could have been stronger and the tempo does get derailed momentarily in the middle, but it never gets too far off track. As far as American horror films go, this one is top notch. I was pleasantly surprised with the film in every way. Matt Reeves has officially put himself on the list of directors whose careers I will be watching closely. he took a risk by adapting such a well received film and by doing it only a few years later, but by changing the tone, he crafted this wonderful film that will hopefully be found by audiences some day.

Final Grade: B+