Let Me In: A pre-teenage vampire story

MANILA, Philippines - Let Me In grows in you like a vampire incisor being unsheathed to snare an exposed neck. Its trailer evokes a gnawing suspicion and uneasy fright — spare us, this is yet another vampire flick cashing on the Twilight parade. After seeing it in full for the first time, I was jolted with creeps. Seeing it the second time, I was wrapped both in horror and awe and yet I was already craving for an encore. Seeing it the eighth time, I felt obligated to share to everybody the pleasure it brought or should I say that rare pleasure of meeting a real pre-teenage vampire — dried blood and pallid flesh and all — while she picks you among other pulsating organisms as her next fast-food meal. 

 Let Me In is a celebrated 2010 horror film by Matt Reeves which most would classify as a romantic horror film but never in the Twilight variety. It is an adaptation of a 2008 Swedish film Let the Right One In by Thomas Anderson. The adaptation has really something in its rapt retelling that Stephen King did not hesitate to name the movie as the best American horror film in the last 20 years.

The 2010 version was transposed from a chilly Sweden to a Los Alamos, New Mexico locale in winter. It was just as thoroughly creepy and elegantly eerie. And it is so even if one’s glimpse of the menacing vampire visage is limited to five minutes at most. The version has only five completely developed characters; all the rest are fodders, figuratively and literally speaking.

 The Chloe Grace Moretz who charmed the viewers as Rachel in 500 Days of Summer is the pallid pre-adolescent girl curled wrapped in subtle bloody red in the movie posters daintily captioned: Innocence Dies. Abby Doesn’t. The caption would suffice to sum up the story. Abby is “12, more or less” years old forever; she is unhappy and lonely, she can walk barefoot in snow and she is extremely hungry for human blood. The scary mood and the ultra-realism of the awkward relationship that developed between Abby and the 12-year-old boy across the apartment doors have steadily kept the chills rolling. It was controlled fright all the way and even without the typical shock tactics, one’s spine tingles as the story unfolded.

The central image of the movie is the space fronting the apartment where the 12 year olds crossed path and struck a casual friendship which by the dictates of circumstances should mutate into some more intimate. The bench that the 12 year olds shared is a sanctuary from their respective domestic situations. The boy is a bully-fodder in school and a distraction to a single mother too depressed to even care about any other soul. The girl, icy, calm and always suffering from some serious pain in the gut, has this rebellious relationship with her putative father.

The bench, sticking like a thumb of relief in a completely snow covered front-yard, is a retreat and at night when it is wrapped in sepia a shed for the girl seemingly waiting for food and for the boy eagerly escaping the deathly atmosphere of his home. Beyond the front-yard, people are missing and are soon found dead and drained of blood.

The police entered the picture and the series of homicides was finally pieced to make sense by an intrepid investigator but it was not quite solved. The movie started in medias res and everything beautifully added up in the critical turns. The obligatory climactic gore was rendered in such nuanced technique that other shock-makers should try once in a while. Story-wise, it was totally unexpected; like a twisted knight in shining armor thing. What clinches is the viewpoint: Watching the events while submerged in a pool, gasping for breath and life, as the water slowly turns red and dead bodies keep falling like logs.

As the movie wraps to a close, we are left with the 12 year olds in transit, happy and free. Or should I say, ominously happy and forbiddingly free. In the end, it was still a movie about relationships, again, not in the Twilight variety. The girl and her putative father. The boy and his spaced-out mother. The girl and the boy. That’s what one remembers about Let Me In. And, yes, that scene, too, when the girl was spouting blood all over from the pores of her skin. You really should let her in.

(About the Author: Jaybee Quiñonez is a practicing lawyer and a Congressional chief of staff.)

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