To be a servant is the price for not being a victim. Those hoping to see a "vampire movie" will be surprised by a good film. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from until his death in In , he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. Rated R for strong bloody horror violence, language and a brief sexual situation.
Elias Koteas as Policeman. Chloe Moretz as Abby. Kodi Smit-McPhee as Owen. Richard Jenkins as Abby's dad. Reviews It's not all fun, games and Team Edward. Roger Ebert September 29, Now streaming on:. Powered by JustWatch. Now playing. The Drummer Robert Daniels. Arrebato Carlos Aguilar. Detention Isaac Feldberg. South of Heaven Sheila O'Malley. Attica Odie Henderson. Film Credits. Let Me In Let Me In is the best English-language vampire movie in ages. That must not be denied though with competition like Twilight , we must ask ourselves: is it that big of an achievement.
If it suffers, it is only because of 's Let the Right One In , the best vampire film, irrespective of language it's Swedish , in I don't know how long; and, by no coincidence at all, Let Me In just so happens to be its remake. A damn close remake it is, too: not shot-for-shot, nor line-for-line, but it's a fair claim that virtually every incident and speech from the first movie occurs in this movie, and in pretty much the same order.
And yet, they are not the same movie; not even interchangeable. They are as alike and as preciously unique as two great recordings of a brilliant symphony, or two performances of Hamlet: great not only because the underlying material is great, but also because of the particular emphases made by each individual set of artists, which mark the two versions as equally valid, though not "different" as such.
Adapted from John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel and his earlier screenplay by writer-director Matt Reeves who has credits scattered hither and yon, but he got the job because of Cloverfield , Let Me In takes place in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in the winter of , where a moody year-old boy named Owen Kodi Smit-McPhee fantasises about stabbings - it's not entirely clear if he sees himself doing the stabbing, or who he imagines is being stabbed, but it spells out in crystal clear letters that Bad News is afoot - when he's not being needlessly bullied or caught in the middle of a rancorous divorce between his absent father and essentially unseen mother Cara Buono.
What happens next is quite familiar to anyone who has seen Let the Right One In , or has a good grasp of narrative tropes: these two outcasts, living in the same apartment complex, start to become friends, despite Abby's curt, ominous warning to Owen that they shouldn't; the boy starts to fall in love, while the vampire and her attendant leave a most bloody trail of dead locals in their wake.
And that change makes Let Me In more of a brutal horror film than the original - even the title is more threatening and direct. Does this change bring with it a certain lessening of emotional nuance? But strictly as a horror film, it's hard to find any fault at all with Let Me In , and if we ignore its predecessor, it still has a great deal more psychological depth than virtually anything else marketed as "horror" to an anglophone audience.
There are at least a few good explanations for why this could be the case. For example, there's the matter of national cinematic identity: Swedish movies are, taken as a whole, more concerned with matters psychological. I'm sure that part of it is Reeves's own inclination that the story could do with less stately pacing and more terror. Whatever the case, the fact remains: Let Me In is a superlative violent vampire picture, directed by Reeves with an engaging flair for tension and shock that he wasn't really able to exploit in Cloverfield , with its proscriptive "first-person camera" aesthetic.
And thanks to a tight script and some really fantastic acting - the kids are both great, but it was Jenkins who kept catching my attention, playing his character's pitch-dark depravity, and the deep love behind it, with all the unassuming intensity we've come to expect from this most unjustly under-appreciated of character actors - the film is a hell of a lot more intelligent than it even needs to be.
However, when the owner returns, a friend is with him, which complicates matters. They stop at a gas station and the driver leaves the car to enter the station's corner shop. While the passenger stays in the car, he notices the "Father" in the backseat, and the passenger is attacked and killed. However, when the "Father" attempts to drive away, he crashes and rolls down an embankment on the side of the road. Feering that his identity will be discovered, the "Father" douses his face with concentrated acid so that his face will not be recognized and his connection to Abby will not be discovered by the police.
The "Father" is taken a hospital into a tenth-floor police-guarded room, and when Abby hears on the news that he is there, she goes to visit him by climbing up the side of the hospital wall outside his window. When he leans out the window, Abby is stricken with grief over what had happened to him.
To end his misery and feed herself, Abby kills her "Father" by biting his neck and sucking out his blood after he implores her to do so, and he falls out the window to his death. Abby is traumatized and confused by the loss of her "Father. Owen allows her into his room, and he asks her to go steady and be his girlfriend. She rejects him first, but when Owen tells her that nothing will change between them, she accepts, and the relationship between the Owen and Abby deepens.
The Policeman gradually learns of the "Father's" past and eventually his connection to Abby. The next day on a field trip at a frozen lake, Owen stands up to his bullies when confronted, and hits Kenny in the head with a pole, splitting his ear and causing him to have a concussion and be hospitalized.
Zoric, the gym teacher, witnesses this and tries to go to the boys, but before he could, one of the girls screams in fear after discovering the dead body of Jack which the "Father" disposed of earlier.
Owen almost got suspended but didn't. When Owen tells Abby about his encounter that night, Abby leans down and kisses him lightly on the cheek. He then takes her down to an abandoned room of the basement of the apartment complex as a surprise. It is said by Owen that the adults are unaware of the room, and that only he, Abby, and his former neighbor Tommy a reference to Tommy from the Swedish novel are aware of it.
He wants to surprise her and he has her close her eyes, and then he cuts his finger to make a blood pact with her.
Abby is taken aback by the blood falling to the ground from his finger and drops to the ground to lick up his blood. She looks up and Owen is able to see her true Vampiric face, not wanting to attack Owen. Abby runs from Owen and attacks a woman in the complex park named Virginia.
Abby jumps from a high tree branch, tackles down, and bites Virginia's neck and tries to drink her blood, but she is wrestled off of her and chased away by Virginia's boyfriend, Larry. Owen comes to terms that Abby is a vampire, and still likes her the same, as she is able to provide the affection he could not find in the mortal world.
He goes to her apartment to confront her, he asks her where her "Father" is, but she tells him that he was not her real father. As Owen looks through Abby's belongings, he finds an aging photo-strip showing Abby with a young boy who appears to be her deceased guardian as a child, who she befriended and was possibly in love with decades ago.
At this point, Owen leaves, either out of horror or jealousy, while Abby is repeating as earlier in the film that they could not be friends. At the hospital the next morning, the police detective learns from Larry that the girl who attacked Virginia in the complex matches the description of who he thought was the real daughter Abby of the Ritual Killer The Father , whom he suspected both of being involved in a criminal Satanic cult.
While the policeman is questioning Larry outside the room, Virginia, unaware that she is a vampire now, begins to feed on her own blood by biting into her own arm. As a nurse opens the blinds to the room's windows, Virginia becomes engulfed in fire on exposure to the sunlight, immolating both her and the nurse to death. That night, Abby visits Owen's apartment while his mother is away, and asks if she can come in.
Owen opens the door wider, indicating that Abby can come in, but then Abby says that he has to invite her in verbally. A curious Owen refuses to do so, wondereing what were to happen if Abby were to enter a private residence without verbal invitation, and pressures her to do so. As she does, she begins to hemorrhage out of all of her bodily orifices and pours in her skin, only to stop when Owen screams that she can come in. They embrace each other, and he asks if she would have bled to death if he did not verbally invite her in, and she responds with, "I knew you wouldn't let me.
Then, while she is changing, Owen sneaks a look at her in through a crack in the door, and is seen with a facial expression of shock, leaving Abby's gender questionable, or at least so to those familiar with the Swedish story. Once Owen's mother suddenly arrives home, she was able to escape from Owen's apartment through the window before his mother saw her.
While Owen's mother drank herself to sleep on the sofa, he sneaks from his apartment to Abby's and spends the night there. The next day, the detective searches for Abby and traces her to her apartment. He initially knocks on the door, but while Owen tries sneaking to the door lens to see the Policeman, he accidentally makes the floorboards creak under his foot.
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