Let Me In Review

Let Me In is one of those frustrating movies that you know in principle you should hate, but just can’t. On the one hand, it is a remake of the Swedish movie Let the Right One In (released less than two years ago) that exists solely to keep Western audiences from being exposed to another language; and it is Americanized in all the ways you probably dread. On the other hand, it’s still very good and people that may not have seen the original are at last granted a proper vampire movie for the first time in who knows how many years. It retains much of the thematic quality of the original movie and while it may feature some of the worst excesses of American horror, it doesn’t indulge them. And while the motives behind its creation may be faulted, you can’t argue with the execution. Much.

Anyway, the story follows a lonely young boy named Owen. Harassed rather ruthlessly at school and ignored at home by parents too busy fighting amongst themselves, Owen finds solace only in the company of a strange young girl (Abby) who turns out to be a vampire. She too is lonely (an interminable existence of killing to survive will do that to you) and she bonds with Owen over this unique kinship they share.

Child vampires aren’t exactly a new idea, but Abby still manages to be unique by modern standards. She lacks the romanticism of the Anne Rice oeuvre, she isn’t clean-cut and safe like the vampires of Twilight, nor is she a Ghoul Gone Wild like the vampires of True Blood. Hers is a much harsher and franker loneliness than we’re accustomed to, presented here bluntly and without embellishment. The world around her is always cold and she too is cold, so cold in fact that she can’t feel snow on her bare feet. She and Owen share an endearingly awkward chemistry; neither of them knows how to interact with people and they can barely manage to talk to each other. But they find safety and security in one another and an escape from the demands of their respective worlds.

One major change in this version of the movie is that the final revelation about Abby (You know the one) has been omitted, likely for the obvious reasons that gender-bending scares and unsettles people and we certainly can’t have that in a horror movie. But, disappointing as that is, Let Me In still retains and emphasizes the themes of gender and sexuality inherent in that revelation. For example, another change from the original is that the bullies who called Oskar (Swedish protagonist) “piggy” call Owen “little girl.” Repeatedly. They really drive this point home: this idea that Owen is somehow less manly than they are.

The kids in Let Me In are around twelve years old, they’re at that age where they are just awakening to the very concept of sexuality. Their bodies are changing, hormones are kicking in and leading to all sorts of nonsense, from cracking voices to identity confusion.  And Owen’s harassment creates an interesting moment early in the film. Before we even meet the bullies, we see Owen practicing with a knife, muttering “Are you scared, little girl?” Of course, by now we know that he’s just trying to channel the bullies’ aggression back at them, but at the time it actually seems like little Owen is raging against women, which is to say: raging against his own burgeoning sexuality and the mess of confusion and awkwardness those surging hormones can bring.

This confusion only gets worse when you add vampirism into the mix. Vampires have always had latent sexual undertones. A vampire’s bite is after all a far more intimate interaction than, say, being mauled by a werewolf or zapped by alien heat rays. It’s not just the proximity, but the often prolonged duration of the attack itself, the exchange of fluids involved and the sense of longing often left in the victim afterward that have enabled all sorts of sexualized portrayals and interpretations over the years. Dracula’s seducing of young girls could tie into fears of foreigners stealing and corrupting the white women of “civilized” Europe, condemnations of female promiscuity or even just sexual predation.

More recently, vampire sexuality has been used to create tragic protagonists, latching onto to eternally unrequited love (like Barnabus Collins from Dark Shadows). Twilight seems to use vampires as a cautionary tale against teenage sexuality and True Blood is the counterpoint to Bram Stoker, with the sexuality that in his day would have been deemed immoral or dangerous becoming commonplace.

Abby has been “twelve for a long time.” She’s stuck in that transitional period between childhood and adulthood. Her animalistic – and notably savage – vampire form is that constant surging of hormones that makes puberty such a wonderful time in a young person’s life. We don’t know how long she’s been a vampire; her body hasn’t aged, but her mind and her emotional state no doubt have. She’s trapped between being a girl and being a woman. Neither child nor adult, she is – like Owen – socially aberrant and so her only means of intimacy comes through her particularly brutal vampire bite. Itself, obviously aberrant.

It becomes crucial then that her relationship with Owen remains virginal. And to illustrate that, there is this one scene where Owen offers her his bloody finger as an oath to remain together. Basically, he proposes to her and the extended finger dripping bodily fluids has its own phallic connotations. But Abby rejects the offer, converts to her vampire form, sublimates her need for blood and focuses it on someone else. The transformation is indicative of the temptation of the offer; it brought out all those conflicted, dangerous desires. But the fact that Abby turned away proves that hers and Owen’s relationship can never be conjugal, can never be mature.

This is where they basically embrace this façade of eternal childhood together. With Abby, Owen never needs to achieve any sense of sexual identity; he never needs to grow into the manhood his world (via bullies) is pressuring him to attain. With Owen, Abby has someone to humanize her in a way, someone to provide stability against the conflicting drives that define her existence (He’s the one person she won’t bite).

There is a Freudian element to this as well (isn’t there always?) with Abby serving both as Owen’s love interest and as a replacement for a mother who is never around. Abby comforts and advises Owen throughout the movie; she teaches and defends him. There is also this symbolic scene where Owen offers Abby one of his mother’s old dresses, essentially offering her that role in his life. And this role she does accept. She protects him and nurtures him and he will stay her child throughout the decades.

We actually see this in representative form through Abby’s “father,” the guardian she has earlier in the movie. He was presumably an Owen himself one day and he followed and protected Abby until he simply became too old to be of use. Essentially, he’s not Mommy’s little boy anymore and needed to move on, which occurs with Abby finally feeding on him, symbolically consummating that weird childlike/Freudian/maternal romance. Basically, she makes her little boy into the man he never wanted to be. But of course, because there are just so many things wrong with this kind of sexuality, it results only in tragedy. He dies and Abby – whose eternal youth and hunger makes her incapable of any other kind of sexuality – is simply left to repeat the cycle.

So, yes, Let Me In is without question the most intelligent American vampire movie in years. It deals with complicated sexualities, gender roles, cycles of violence, growing up, loneliness, alienation and so, so much more. But the problem is that all of these things were plundered from Let the Right One In and most of them are re-presented in exactly the same way. Even most of the dialogue is the same. The only major distinctions are the changes to Abby and some CGI vampire attacks that do serve to make Abby more primal, but also tend to look like crap. The actors all do a fantastic job and between this and Kick-Ass, little Hit-Girl is well on her way to becoming the new It Girl of child stars. But the question remains: why remake a movie that is only two years old? Why not just option the original and release it as is in American theatres?

Well, because American audiences are conditioned to hate subtitles, that’s why. And I suppose it would be asking too much for any major studio to take the brave stand to change their mind. But at least these audiences are treated to a recreation by a director who clearly cared about the original, one with a great deal more thought behind it than the usual vampire dross. For all future vampire moviemakers, this is now the standard to which you will be held.

But originality has to count for something. And while Let Me In is a beautiful and tragic movie with impeccable acting and a great deal of thought and intelligence behind it, it is still just a rehash of somebody else’s work. While it is better than we have been getting, it’s not as good as we deserve.

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