Movie Review: 'Let Me In'

Lately, it seems that one can’t even utter past the “vam” in “vampires” before people start to roll their eyes at them. If you’re one of those people, don’t let the vampire craze sway your judgement when it comes to LET ME IN. In this remake of the 2008 cult Swedish film LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, vampires do not sparkle, they are not heartthrobs, and they sure as hell aren’t “vegetarians”. So any preconceived notions you have, leave them at the door. This movie makes its own rules.

Before I get the swarms of fans of the original attacking me for bestowing praise on the remake (if I see “protest this movie” on one more IMDb thread, I might lose it) I am familiar with the original. I’m not going to lie, I did my homework the night before…that homework being that I watched the original on Netflix so I could make an accurate comparison. And I promise you that the remake did it justice. The two are actually crazy similar, and much of the dialogue is pulled straight from the original, word-for-word. That’s not to say that the remake didn’t make its changes, it did. There’s more violence and like most remakes, the filmmakers took some liberties. But this isn’t about the original, this is about LET ME IN. And as a remake and as a stand-alone film, LET ME IN succeeds admirably.

While watching this movie, there was one thought I couldn’t get out of my head: hasn’t it always been some sort of unspoken rule that you don’t fuck with kids in the movies? You know, no murdering or hurting little kids…if something bad is about to happen to them, some heroic force of nature must always swoop in at the last minute and save the precious little ones? Yeah…this movie clearly didn’t get the memo. LET ME IN is about a Owen (Kodi Smith-McPhee), a young outcast who is tormented by bullies at school. When a mysterious girl named Abby (Chloe Grace Moretz) moves into his building with her guardian, they start to form an unlikely friendship. It’s no secret to us that this little girl who’s “more or less” 12 years old is a vampire. And a brutal, violent one at that. There’s a good amount of intense, bloody violence that can quality this film to be labeled under the “horror” genre…not to mention a handful of straight-up terrifying scenes. But its about more than just that. For a movie with as much gore and violence as this one, it’s usually out of character to have such a sweet, innocent love story simultaneously at the forefront, but LET ME IN balances the two seamlessly. Kodi Smith-McPhee and Chloe Grace Moretz (who you’ll recognize as “Hit Girl” from Kick-Ass) take on their roles with the strength of old pros. Any adult character in this film, with the exception of Richard Jenkins as Abby’s guardian, is a vastly secondary character. This is the kids’ film through and through.

Admittedly, this kind of movie usually isn’t my cup of tea. I usually find that people who are die hard fans of movies like LET THE RIGHT ONE IN are those same kinds of people who find softly lit shots of a person lying in the snow covered in blood “beautiful”. I am not one of those people. But with a movie as well-made as this one, that doesn’t really matter. The love story sucked me in, the scary scenes had me watching the film through my fingers, and the acting was a testament to how good kid actors can truly be. If you’re bordering the fence on whether or not to give LET ME IN a shot, just get yourself inside the theater, and let the movie do the rest.

Rating: A-