Review of Let Me In (2010) by Rocknblues 8 — 17 Nov 2013

Let Me In is in a remake of a Sweden film titled "Let The Right One In" which was made just two years earlier. And while I haven't seen that version, I'm not one of these guys that believes the grass is always greener on the other side. I do plan on seeing the original. In fact, I bought the original off ebay, but it was a flawed copy. So, I rented this version and to my surprise, it's a solid horror/romance film. So yeah, I saw this one first... Sue Me.

Anyway, the movie is about a young teenage boy named Owen that is a misfit and the victim of a broken home. The mother is a religious nut, and the father is clearly an atheist. It's hard to believe these two people got together and produced a kid in the first place. But anyway, Owen ends up living with his mother and it turns out that he becomes a victim of the typical bullies at school. One late night he meets a girl named Abby that is his age, and she happens to live nearby. Next door in fact. Although reluctant to make friends, Abby grows interested in Owen's Rubix cube. The two strike up a friendship.

As the two grow closer we also learn more about Abby and her father. Both are hiding the secret that Abby is actually a vampire and her father must go out and kill young victims in order to feed her. Only the father has grown sloppy and is no longer able to pull off his dirty deeds. After failing to finish off one of his victims he ends up in a car accident and is taken to the hospital by the cops. After discovering he father/caretaker is badly injured and unable to carry on, she dispatches of him and sets her sights on Owen.

Naturally Owen is briefly taken back with the revelation of Abby being a vampire, but he cares for her and therefore "accepts" what she is. As the film slowly plays out we can see a bleak future for Owen... A future that isn't all that different from Abby's last companion. If you want to be honest about it, this is more of a tragic love story that it is a horror film. None that it's totally without gore and tension. It has plenty of that. The characters are well developed, the soundtrack is good and it helps create tension at the appropriate moments. Something we rarely see with horror films these days. Surprisingly the effects work for most of the gore shots. The violence is mostly in short effective and powerful bursts. It's all more creepy than you might expect.

The film is long, and it's more about character development than it is cheap thrills, but it's all worth it since this is a good film. Is it better than the original? That I cannot say, but I will say that this is a good film if you have a decent attention span and you want more than cheap boo scares and hammy cliche dialogue.