Let Me In

Halloween is on its way, and with it we always get a new glut of horror movies in theaters. This is fine with me, because I love horror movies. I’ve blogged about them here before, including my 11-blog series devoted to Herpetological Horrors, and last year’s Halloween Special Scary Movie Blog. In recent years I’ve grown somewhat weary of the standard slasher type of horror movie, but I’m always willing to check out those with a supernatural/alien/monster theme. So, although I’m never far from it, I got into the Halloween spirit by seeing the new vampire movie, Let Me In. If you like movies about bloodsuckers, I think you’ll like this one!

Let Me In is a remake of the 2008 Swedish vampire movie, Let the Right One In, itself based on a novel of the same name. I liked the original movie a lot, too, but I like this new version better. The Swedish movie was a bit more low-key, while this one goes for the gusto. It incorporates some digital effects that provided some startling moments without going too far over the top, and it’s got one of the best, dizzying car crash scenes ever (a weird compliment, perhaps, but you’ll see what I mean if you see the movie).

Let Me In begins with an ambulance tearing through a snowy, New Mexico landscape, and things never get much cheerier. Soon we meet Owen, an unhappy 12-year-old who’s living in a depressing Los Alamos apartment complex with his mother, who spends her evenings asleep on the couch with an empty wine glass nearby. The apartment grounds consist of a small courtyard that contains a single Jungle Jim, where Owen sits playing with a Rubik’s cube (the movie takes place in 1983). School life isn’t much brighter, and Owen finds himself in the sights of a teenage sociopath named Kenny and his cronies, who torment him mercilessly. Add Owen to the long list of schoolkids who are plagued by bullies, a la Carrie, The Karate Kid, the hilarious Three O’Clock High and other movies of their ilk.

One night, Owen hears movement in the courtyard and looks out his window to see a middle-aged man and a young girl making their way through the snow. He soon hears them in the hall outside his door and, peering through the peephole, he discovers that they are his new neighbors. Oddly, the girl is barefoot despite having just trudged through the snow.

The next day Owen notices the windows of the next-door apartment are now covered with pieces of cardboard. That night, as he sits on the Jungle Jim, the girl appears. Owen notices she is still barefoot, and asks why she isn’t freezing. She tells him the cold doesn’t bother her. They chat briefly, and he learns her name is Abby. Before, leaving, she informs Owen that they cannot be friends.

Abby’s father is seen leaving the apartment that night carrying a black satchel. He heads to a supermarket parking lot and watches from a distance as a young man pulls in and parks his car. When the driver goes into the store, Abby’s dad breaks into the car and creeps into the backseat. The driver returns and drives out of the lot. He doesn’t notice the dark figure that rises up behind him. Soon the driver is unconscious and being dragged through the woods. Abby’s father strings him up, suspending him upside-down from a tree, and cuts his throat. He removes a plastic jug and a funnel from the satchel and positions them beneath the hanging body to catch the flowing blood. When the container is full he caps it and begins heading back to the car. But then he falls, sending the container flying and spilling most of its oozy contents. He is then forced to make a hasty retreat when a snowplow appears. Later that night, Owen hears animal-like sounds and commotion coming from the apartment next door.

The next evening, when Abby once again appears to Owen at the Jungle Jim, she looks haggard – perhaps even malnourished, as if she hasn’t been eating enough. Soon she is crouched in a nearby pedestrian tunnel, begging an approaching man for help. Let’s just say that if you ever encounter a mysterious little girl at night, in a tunnel, begging for help, let someone else be the good Samaritan. Later, through the apartment walls, Owen hears what appears to be a fight between Abby and her father, who later finds himself having to dispose of a decidedly messy body in the dead of the night.

Meanwhile, Owen enjoys his growing bond with Abby, who cautiously “lets him in.” She hints ominously that there is more to her than meets the eye, and even asks him if he would still like her if she wasn’t a girl (leading to snickers from some of the more immature audience members). Owen is smitten, and he’s on cloud nine while sharing his favorite candy, a Now and Later, with his new friend. Abby throws up after eating it. As their friendship blossoms, though, things get complicated and increasingly threatening as Owen’s bullying problems continue, and a detective begins nosing around the apartment complex.

An invigorating new twist on the vampire tale, the fast-paced Let Me In contains plenty of riveting moments and excellent performances. Both kids – Kodi Smit-McPhee as Owen and Chloe Moretz as Abby – are great. Richard Jenkins, who plays Abby’s “father,” is a character actor who’s been in many movies. He stood out in the 1996 Ben Stiller movie, Flirting With Disaster, as well as many others, though he was the star in only one movie: 2007’s The Visitor. Jenkins was also the ghostly father in the HBO series, Six Feet Under (having been hit by a bus in the pilot episode). The always-reliable Elias Koteas plays the increasingly befuddled detective. The most recent genre movie he was in was another I blogged about – as a matter of fact, it was my first movie review blog – The Fourth Kind.

I also wanted to mention that the music in Let Me In was terrifically atmospheric. As a nerdy kid, before becoming a nerdy adult, I used to collect movie soundtracks. I’ve got lots of albums that I no longer know what to do with. I’ll probably end up trying to sell them on eBay. Anyway, they say a good soundtrack is one you don’t notice, that it affects you almost on a subliminal level, but I don’t necessarily agree with that. I notice good movie music, and this one had plenty. The reason you feel that vein pulsing in your forehead during a hyper-tense scene involving a bathroom door? Thank Michael Giacchino’s music.

As mentioned, I like Let Me In better than the original Swedish Let The Right One In upon which it is based. This is rare, as I don’t usually like the U.S. remake of a foreign horror movie better than the original. The only other instance I can recall is The Ring. I thought the U.S. version was fantastically creepy, whereas the Japanese original, Ringu, while still a good movie, didn’t creep me out as much. For the record, in regard to Asian horror, I like Ju-on (aka The Grudge, later followed by a lesser U.S. remake) and Gin gwai (aka The Eye, and also remade as an inferior U.S. version). If you want to see a really weird Japanese horror film, check out Uzumaki (aka Spiral), which features, among other weirdness, the residents of a small village turning into snails. As I write this, I’ve got The Human Centipede (First Sequence) Blu-ray sitting on my coffee table at home. From everything I’ve read about this movie, it will probably be a top contender for the title of Most Bizarre Foreign Horror Flick in Recent Memory.

If you’re ready for horrific thrills, Let Me In is the perfect movie to jumpstart your Halloween season. Let me know what some of your other favorite cinematic scarefests are by leaving a comment below!