I Found an Absolute Gem Called Let Me In

I know what a lot of you hardcore, hard-boiled cinephiles out there are already saying:

"B-b-b-but 'Let Me In' is an unambitious remake of an obscure 2008 Swedish film called 'Let The Right One In.' AAAAAAAAAAAH!"

And you'd be right. But do I care? Ha ha, nope. Why not? Well, a variety of reasons. First off, I have not seen Let The Right One In. Rest assured, it's on my watchlist, and its "watched" status will probably change soon, even in the next few days. Secondly, I love Matt Reeves. I love his directing tendencies. But I love his storytelling priorities most of all. In fact, his films and their emotional resonance are a big reason why I grew to love filmmaking so much in the first place. The story is reportedly very similar to Let The Right One In, but from what I've gathered, the emotional center of this movie rests in a very different place. And third, for a while, I'd been wondering if my love for film was slipping. Let Me In made me realize that I'd merely gotten away from my first love. I had forgotten why I had become passionate about film in the first place. I had forgotten how intensely personal movies could be. Even if it's not objectively the best film I've seen even this month, Let Me In is probably my favorite movie I've seen this year, and I have been absolutely dying to talk about it for the less than 24 hours since I've watched it because as it turns out, Team Edward Cullen is merely the lame mascot for vampire stories (yes...Let Me In is a vampire story). It's movies like Reeves's overlooked 2010 gem that actually have the fangs.

Let Me In is a 2010 American remake of the 2008 Swedish film Let The Right One In. Set in 1983, the film follows Owen, a lonely and bullied boy living in a wintery New Mexico who meets a mysterious girl named Abby, who only comes out of her house at night. It quickly becomes apparent that there's more to Abby than meets the eye, and Owen and Abby's relationship gets very complicated very quickly.

To be expected from a Matt Reeves film, the visual storytelling in Let Me In is not only pervasively used but excellently used as well. Some who aren't familiar with the technique, and even some who are, might say that Reeves takes the adage of show-don't-tell too far, but in a film landscape saturated with exposition-heavy movies, it's nice to see a film that likes to show us things and use its visual medium to full effect. Almost every important plot point of the film is seen before it's heard, if it's heard at all, and though some might find this technique tiring and maybe even confusing, I found it refreshing. I watch a lot of movies, and I've heard a lot of exposition. It was nice to see things for once. It allowed for a lot of truly powerful, quiet, and introspective moments in the film, and personally, I never felt that it ever grew tiring. Maybe that's just because I got used to exposition-heavy flicks and it was nice to see some change for a while, but to be frank, I kind of doubt it. The quiet nature of Let Me In lent a genuinely intimate feel to the film, and that's something I want to discuss in detail a little bit later on. One aspect of what made this film's visually-focused narrative so effective has to be its unapologetically moody and all-encompassing atmosphere. Cinematographer Grieg Fraser and production designer Ford Wheeler are firing on all cylinders in this movie, capturing 1980s New Mexico in a way that feels grounded and familiar, but also startlingly alien and often hostile. Everything about this film's atmosphere is absolutely incredible, and as I watched the film, it became apparent to me very quickly that Reeves and his gang borrowed a lot of direct and indirect inspiration from it for 2022's The Batman, another movie that I absolutely love. There are a couple of specific scenes in The Batman that are startlingly similar to some scenes from Let Me In, to the point where the filmmakers of Let Me In might have sued Warner Brothers and the Caped Crusader for plagiarism if the films weren't, you know, written and directed by the same person. The soundtracks, both composed by Michael Giacchino, even sound startlingly similar, both possessing a distinct neo-gothic sound. I heard hints of Giacchino's Planet of the Apes trilogy scores as well. If you know me, you know I love the OST for The Batman, and so I think it goes without saying that I love the sound of Let Me In as well. The film's OST is far from generic, unapologetically embracing the tone of the movie and running with it in the sound department. The film's soundtrack is appropriately an auditory extension of its visuals and its tone rather than a generic sound in the background to keep viewers from becoming bored, which is a telltale hallmark of a good score, and when combined with the immersive cinematography, Let Me In is a heck of an audio-visual treat.

One of my favorite things about this film has to be a trademark of Matt Reeves's directing priorities: Let Me In is unabashedly personal and, beyond even that, vulnerable and emotionally intimate. This film is a very serious one, never undercutting its mood with an out-of-nowhere or out-of-place joke or one-liner, but it can also be, strangely enough, a really sweet movie when it wants to be, despite some surprisingly dark subject matter that it chooses to take surprisingly seriously. Long story short, I guess what I'm trying to say is that this film never compromises on its tone. It's what vampire films should have been in the first place. This film should never have been considered a subversion because, despite what you've been told, Twilight is not square one for vampire stories or even vampire films. In a lot of ways, Let Me In feels a lot less like what we've come to know as a vampire movie, and a lot more like an intimate and grounded character study and coming-of-age story that happens to have a vampire in it. The film is a tragic subversion of both the horror and romance genres, and it was nice to see that there was a lot more that could be done with the genre that Let Me In inhabits than some might think. It was nice to see an off-genre film that could create feelings I didn't know I could feel from a vampire flick, especially doubt. It's kind of hard to believe that Abby might be manipulating Owen throughout this flick, but....well, you watch the movie. I want to double down on what I said at the beginning of this article, and reiterate that this film is probably my favorite of the year, even if it may not be objectively the best film I've seen this year, because even if it falls just short of perfection due to it's extreme overreliance on it's source material and similarities to the 2008 Swedish film, it's still an extremely good film, and if you are a fan of Matt Reeves's filmography or emotionally intelligent films in general, I highly recommend it, with a couple of caveats. This movie is really mature, not just in the way it views the world but in its subject matter as well. Let Me In is a very violent movie, far more so than is usual for a slow-burn psychological flick, and contains one scene where Abby removes her clothes before climbing into bed with Owen. Given, nothing explicit is seen in this particular moment because the scene is out of focus, but it's still kind of off-putting, because....well, you fill in the blanks here. Some of Owen's occasional voyeurism in the movie focuses on some foreplay with a bit of nudity (the lovers in question close their curtains when they spot Owen). So Let Me In is not for younger audiences, and I hope that I've dissuaded you of any notions of that manner. But all that said, I genuinely loved Reeves's take. I'll try and get down to watching Let The Right One In, and I'll probably have a better-formed opinion on the similarities and differences between the two films once I watch the Swedish version. For what this film was and even, in a lot of ways, through an objective lens, Let Me In was really, really good, likely my favorite film of the year so far, and it's one I really hope you'll watch, especially if you're into film noir or the rest of Reeves's filmography. This film, though it will be very familiar to some, is obviously made by a very talented director who clearly loves his work, and in a lot of ways, it brought me back to my first love in film: emotional honesty. Not every film has to be an intellectual Christopher Nolan project. Sometimes, telling the raw, ugly, and paradoxically beautiful truth about what we, as people who are made in God's image, feel and experience is enough.

Let Me In - 9/10

Proverbs 27:6

Edit: just finished Let The Right One In. Both films are perfectly legitimate takes on the story, and while Reeves's version is very similar to the Swedish one, it's visually distant enough, and I equally love both films for the same and different reasons.