Eye Candy #512 - "Let Me In"

Let Me In:  What we have here is a well-made little reduction of vampire mythology, stripping away the hyper-sexuality, beauty, and hedonism, to reveal the lonely life of someone dependent on the blood of others to survive who also happens to explode in direct sunlight.  Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee, from “The Road”) is a young, lonely boy who lives in a single parent home and is the object of violence for a sadistic local bully.  Then one day, two drifters, a vampire named Abby (Chloe “Hit Girl” Moretz) and her “father” (Richard Jenkins) move in next door, and suddenly the town of Los Alamos, New Mexico isn’t going to be the same.  Owen and Abby strike up a tentative friendship despite Abby’s wishes, as the bodies start to pile up around town.  Elias Koteas plays a detective investigating the murders.  Director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) says that he is using the horror genre as a metaphor for adolescence and he certainly wouldn’t be the first.  Look at movies like “I Was a Teenage Werewolf”, “Teeth” and even “Teen Wolf”.   But  I think it’s even simpler than that: it’s about love and friendship.  It’s about what happens when two desperately lonely people find comfort with one another, even if one is a 12-year-old boy and the other a much older vampire.  McPhee and Moretz are just great together - their scenes seem so effortless and natural.  Jenkins and Koteas are also well-cast.  The film isn’t played for gore, though there are some violent, bloody scenes.  But Reeves juxtaposes those scenes against ones of tenderness between the two leads.  It seems perfectly reasonable for Owen to ask Abby if she wants ‘to go steady” as the blood dries on her chin.  In any other film, that would be comedic moment.  Very little in the way of special effects, and the climactic fight at the swimming pool is particularly well-staged.  This is not your standard vampire picture, but it’s a very good flick.  Woodchuck sez, “Check it out.”