Let Me In

This movie is an adaptation of the Swedish film Let the Right One In. The premise to both the films is that this bullied boy living in suburbia meets this girl who lives with her father but never really leaves her house, and they become friends. The whole thing takes a pretty drastic turn when the audience finds out (before the boy) that the girl is actually a vampire that doesn't age and her "father" is actually just a dude she met that she's been shacked up with and he kills people and gives their blood to the vampire girl so that she doesn't have to kill people.

Shit gets really dramatic really quickly in this movie. It goes from 0 to 10 when the audience starts to see the girls "father" strangling people and then draining them and collecting their blood. And although things start to get really strange at a point, the tone of the movie is all over very dark and creepy, especially because most of this movie takes place at night, in the winter, so it's also visually very dark; very fitting with the tone. This is the best vampire movie I've seen so far. It isn't super action-y and the vampire in this movie is a child, making it basically impossible to hate this her or think she's a monster because she is just a kid.

The best parts of Let Me In are the parts where they pit different kinds of moralities against each other. You are faced with the situation the little boy is in: neglected at home and bullied at school, and his only friend, the only person who has been nice to him all movie, is this night dwelling little girl who happens to be a vampire. Paralleled with that is the fact that the vampire-girl's "dad" is killing people so A) she doesn't have to and B) so she can stay alive. So yeah, audiences want this little boy's only friend to stay alive and safe so he doesn't go insane with loneliness, but is it worth it to be murdering a ton of people so that this boy can have a friend? I don't know, but the movie makes it really hard to argue against their friendship because it does such a good job making you feel bad for this poor, poor boy, and making this girl seem worthy of the lifestyle she has right now, which isn't much of a life outside of this little boy.
While I wouldn't consider most of this movie horror, the horror elements of this movie were really well executed. The conflict in this movie is (as you can expect) the guy who gets the blood for the vampire-girl, in short, is no longer able to get her blood, so this little girl has to go rouge and get her own blood. So, there's a few scenes that show the little girl attacking people, which aren't as much scary as they are creepy or disturbing. There's a long scene where she's at the end of the tunnel and the camera is at the opposite end so you can only see her silhouette, and a runner comes through the tunnel and begins to ask her if she's okay. As he get closer and closer to her, trying to see if she's hurt or not you can expect what going to happen. So this little girl attacks this guy, brings him down, and kills/eats him; the scene is pretty creepy, but the shot is so pretty. The audience watches this attack go down from the faint light at the opening of the tunnel and all you can see are the silhouettes of the the two people. There's another scene where, because of certain circumstances, she's up in a tree and she jumps out of the tree and attacks this woman and her dog. Like I said before, these scenes aren't really scary, just super creepy and disturbing. Even the scenes where the "dad" would strangle people and drain them like pigs weren't really scary, just insanely creepy. The movie honestly could have been more about their (the vampire girl and the "dad") relationship than the vampire girl and the little boy.
The ending is super interesting to me, because this whole movie, you feel super bad for this couple of kids because it seems like they're both in situations that they can't control. However, in the end you kind of realize that the situation may be a bit skewed, like, this little vampire girl may be not as vulnerable to her own monstrous nature as the audience is made to think. In the end there's this big blowout between the little boy and the vampire girl and the little boy's bullies and it's probably the scariest part of the movie. After that part you see the little boy on this train with this huge trunk and he taps Morse Code on the top...and then he gets a response from the inside--and then the movie ends! Woah plot twist the little boy just became the new "dad". And I don't know if this is the general consensus about this ending, but what I thought of it was that this movie spent the majority of the runtime was spent making the audience pity this poor small vampire girl, and then this girl uses this boys feelings to make him become her new caretaker. So the real plot twist is that she's actually the manipulative monster this movie was trying to convince you she wasn't for two hours.

This is seriously a super cool vampire movie, may I even say, the coolest vampire movie. The dark tone, and the interesting juxtaposition between moralities makes this movie pretty interesting, past the generic thriller/horror elements. This is a really cool movie and a really good example of how to execute a vampire movie really well.
Side-note: My favorite part of this movie and, I think the most fun part of this movie, comes from where they tie in the title to the plot; these two kiddo's first discover each other because they communicate by doing Morse Code on the wall between each other's rooms. The boy wants this girl to come over and when she does, she tells the boy that he has to invite her in ("let me in"). At some point he wants to find out what happens if he doesn't, so instead of telling him what will happen this chick just walks into his apartment and starts just bleeding from everywhere. Like she bleeds from her hair line, from her eyes from her nose, and the little boy just straight-up panics; it's a pretty damn good scene.