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MOVIE REVIEW: LET ME IN

Let Me In was not what I expected but I loved it anyway. I thought I was going to be scared and I was so looking forward to it. Ever since I was a little girl, I loved when a movie scared me to death; shaking at the edge of my seat, my heart bounding fast inside my chest, my breathing would get quick and shallow. It doesn’t happen much anymore – not in the movie theater anyway;)  I think the last time I was really frightened  at a movie was in 2002: The Ring. Never-the-less, Let Me In is an excellent movie. Its use of mood and atmosphere along with its straight-forward approach to the subject matter makes for an eerie product that manages to crawl under your skin.

This is a thoughtful and intelligent remake of the Swedish horror film; Let the Right One In (2008). Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) takes on John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel, an exceptional piece of work by the way, and turns it into something much better than '08 version. It’s not that the original isn’t good; it’s good. But the remake is better. How often does that happen? Sadly, almost never. Lucky for us, we have an opportunity to see a movie that quietly but expertly gives us a masterful study of loneliness that spares nothing in its depiction of the need for blood and belonging.

Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee – The Road) lives with his mom (Cara Buono), an overly religious woman with a drinking problem. We never see her face in focus, emphasizing Owen's sense of being alone - clever. He is small for his age, relentlessly bullied at school, sometimes brutally. For comfort he heads out into the freezing night and hangs around the empty playground of his apartment complex. Alone, until one night a girl and an older man move into the apartment next door. Soon the girl, Abby (a remarkably talented, relative newcomer, Chloe Moretz – Kick Ass), joins him in the cold dark, barefoot, impervious to the elements. "We can't be friends," she warns, but to a boy as alone as Owen, such caution is futile. He craves companionship of any kind, and in Abby, as unusual as she might be; he thinks he might have found some. When Owen asks if she will be his girlfriend, “I’m not a girl” she replies. But that’s OK too. Abby encourages Owen to stand up for himself at school, with the implication that, should he need it, she can help him. This is a relationship of horribly wounded people willing to look past each other's imperfections - that's putting it mildly in Abby's case. Smit-McPhee and Moretz do such an outstanding job of getting that across in their performances, I think it’s fair to say, this movie would not work without them.

The vampire element is underplayed here - it's given obligatory moments of ghoulish bloodletting, but never really viewed as a true threat or supreme evil. Instead, we are supposed to view the horror of the real world as seen through the eyes of these children and marvel at how they could possibly survive. In fact, Let Me In is one of the best, boldest coming of age statements ever. It centers on the angst that drives the pre-adolescent, the uneasy feeling of being an outsider and alone in your nonconformity, and then highlights its harmful consequences. Emotions are expressed in an overflow of blood instead of inane psychological bullshit and that's what makes this film brilliant. Let Me In is one of the better films of 2010 but unfortunately has a very limited audience. Go see it fast. I don’t think it will be in the theaters for long; not bloody enough for teenagers and to plodding for the average moviegoer.