LET ME IN

Rating: 5

LET ME IN unfolds at a deliberate pace, all the better to allow the audience to assimilate this unusual take on the vampire mythos. The film, a variation on the Scandinavian art-house hit LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, aspires to do more than shock with gore. And it does. The shock, though, is in considering vampirism, with its attendant brutality and violence, as part of the natural condition, and perhaps a not ignoble one. Vampires in this retelling kill to survive, albeit with great violence. Humans, on the other hand torment one another for their own amusement or from their complete isolation from one another, even when occupying the same space. It’s a provocative premise, but one handled with superb sensitivity. The result is that the question of evil becomes far trickier in this context. The audience is manipulated to be sure, but not with trickery, but with a worldview that is honest and unfettered by the static of preconceived notions. There is intelligence in every word and in every performance, most strikingly in those of the child leads. Never childish, but never for a moment precociously adult, either.

By setting the film firmly in the world of two 12-year-olds, the premise is thrown into high relief. The human 12-year-old is Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a slight and weedy child with huge, knowing eyes, is preyed upon daily, even hourly, by a pack of bullies at school. His mother, too wrapped up in her religion, her drinking, and her uncivil divorce, misses all the pertinent signs. His father a little more than a voice over the phone His school turns a blind eye, if it has seen anything at all. After daily beatings, physical and psychological, and the constant fear that any moment might erupt into pain that he cannot escape and that no one will protect him from, the idea of a vampire next door doesn’t seem so bad. Particularly as she is angelic, once she has fed, and the same sort of outcast loner that he is. She is Abby (Chloe Moretz), who has been 12, as she puts it, for a very long time. She is the mysterious new girl who moves into Owen’s decidedly downscale apartment complex where unsavory doings are the order of the day.

They bond in the snow-covered courtyard of their building despite Abby’s warning that they can never be friends. Abby’s full attention, and her ability to make him feel that he can control his environment, even a little, is irresistible. The shouting he hears from her apartment through the walls. The creepy father (Richard Jenkins) who comes and goes at odd hours. The way she throws up when she tries his favorite candy. None of that matters, even when he discovers what it all means.

By far the most terrifying moments in the film come from the abuse Owen suffers at the hands of his tormentors. The camera using tight close-ups mimics Owen’s sense of being trapped by the three older kids who first tell him what is going to happen to him, sometimes with only a look, and then with the follow through that leaves him in a heap listening to their laughter. The second most terrifying moments are Owen’s reactions, alone in his room, donning a mask, grabbing a knife, and mouthing the same threats and the same insults he regularly receives while thrusting the blade furiously. The third most terrifying moments are when the policeman (Elias Koteas) assigned to solve the seemingly ritual murder in the neighborhood comes close to discovering the truth. By this point, the film has gently, insistently, incontrovertibly placed all the sympathy with the kids, despite the savagery that Abby has shown when slaking her thirst. There is something wistful in how, when asked by Owen why she must be invited in before she can cross a threshold or enter a window, she replies that she doesn’t know, it’s just the way it is. Like her condition, it’s a fact and though she is subject to it, it’s not her fault.

LET ME IN is a masterpiece of subtle horror told in hushed tones and lurking tension. The eerie glow in Owen’s eye as light refracts back through his telescope as he watches something wrong taking place in the apartment across the way echoes in the glow of Abby’s eyes as she’s feeding. A picture of Jesus watches with benevolence and even understanding as Owen sneaks money from his mother’s wallet. The tenderness with which Abby strokes her father’s cheek before he sets out to find blood for her, and the tenderness with which he accepts it. Wrong is somehow not right, but not exactly wrong, either. This is a film as haunting as it is troubling, as enchanting as it is brutal.