Gotta say it. Let Me In is on my list of "Top Ten Vampires Movies of All Time". This was a terribly moving film, a dark love story between a twelve-year-old boy and a (seemingly) twelve year old girl vampire. But nothing about this film was "easy" while all of it managed to move as well as disturb. Chloe Grace Moretz and Kodi Smit McPhee portrayed anything but typical children, their performances so utterly real as to be heart-wrenching. Here I saw the kind of searing truth that haunts me to this day. What a brilliant film! How unlike the cliche stuff we've gotten used to of billowing curtains, colored candles, poetic declarations by vampires who seem like creatures who stepped out of a Romantic painting. Here I saw a grittiness, a naturalistic horror that achieved its own kind of poetry.
Mind you, despite the murders and sense of tension, this film really shouldn't have been billed as a thriller. First and foremost, Let Me In remains a drama that uses horror movie tropes in an original way. Primarily it paints a portrait of that hideously awkward process of beginning to grow up. Owen (the lead character) needs support, needs help, needs love and comfort and company. By chance, he gets none of these things, but instead attracts the rabid attention of a budding psychopath. Then, Abby enters his life--someone as lonely and in many ways abandoned as himself. Their bond grows, with a hefty price tag attached, but one each agrees to pay. Neither should ever have to make these choices. But while they shouldn't have to, circumstances force it upon them. A tragedy. Yet in a strange way, a triumph as well.
