Let Me In
Today Audz and I saw Let Me In, which has only been out in Australia for two weeks but has already stopped playing at most cinemas. Which is a crying shame, because I absolutely fucking adored this movie.
It's genuinely horrifying, not in a 'so much gore!' way, or even an 'I'm so scared about the scary thing that's about to scare me!' way, but in the way where you can feel the way in which the terrible endings wind tighter and tighter around all of the characters with every action they make.
It's about how every predator is someone else's victim -- the bully at school has a mean older brother, the serial killer goes home to the monster he adores -- and that, too easily, every victim can become someone else's predator. The brother calls the bully 'little girl' and then the bully turns around and calls the smaller boy in his class 'little girl' and the cycle goes on and on...
Unless the little girl has claws and fangs.
As well as horrifying, this movie is sad. It's inevitable to compare this movie to Let the Right One In, but for whatever it's worth I've never even felt close to tears watching the original, or when reading the book -- they're just not that kind of story, either of them. Awful things happen, but there's no especially strong emotion attached to them.
But Let Me In is a tragedy. Even while you viscerally feel how very, very badly Owen needs to get away, to run, to survive the crushing loneliness of his broken home and his cruel classmates and to get away out into adult life someday, even while you feel all that, you also feel how sweet Abby is alongside her cunning predatory manipulation. You feel that she does love the man she lives with, and she does love Owen.
As much as she's capable of loving, she loves them with all of it. That doesn't mean love can save anyone, or redeem the things they do. It can just make everything an awful ballet of loneliness and connection.
Basically, I really loved the movie. It isn't perfect, and neither is the original. They each just are what they are, and they're very different things, and I love them both. Let Me In hurts the heart far more, though. You ache for everyone by the end, and know that there isn't a happy ending for any of them.
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It's genuinely horrifying, not in a 'so much gore!' way, or even an 'I'm so scared about the scary thing that's about to scare me!' way, but in the way where you can feel the way in which the terrible endings wind tighter and tighter around all of the characters with every action they make.
It's about how every predator is someone else's victim -- the bully at school has a mean older brother, the serial killer goes home to the monster he adores -- and that, too easily, every victim can become someone else's predator. The brother calls the bully 'little girl' and then the bully turns around and calls the smaller boy in his class 'little girl' and the cycle goes on and on...
Unless the little girl has claws and fangs.
As well as horrifying, this movie is sad. It's inevitable to compare this movie to Let the Right One In, but for whatever it's worth I've never even felt close to tears watching the original, or when reading the book -- they're just not that kind of story, either of them. Awful things happen, but there's no especially strong emotion attached to them.
But Let Me In is a tragedy. Even while you viscerally feel how very, very badly Owen needs to get away, to run, to survive the crushing loneliness of his broken home and his cruel classmates and to get away out into adult life someday, even while you feel all that, you also feel how sweet Abby is alongside her cunning predatory manipulation. You feel that she does love the man she lives with, and she does love Owen.
As much as she's capable of loving, she loves them with all of it. That doesn't mean love can save anyone, or redeem the things they do. It can just make everything an awful ballet of loneliness and connection.
Basically, I really loved the movie. It isn't perfect, and neither is the original. They each just are what they are, and they're very different things, and I love them both. Let Me In hurts the heart far more, though. You ache for everyone by the end, and know that there isn't a happy ending for any of them.
This entry was originally posted over here and has
comments at the moment.