Unsuitable Indulgence
Let Me In
Directed by Matt Reeves
Runtime: 115 min.
Let Me In ought
to be rated NC-17 due to the problematic nature of its vague concept:
Spooky Abby (Chloe Grace Moretz), a child vampire, encourages her wimpy
neighbor Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) to emulate some of her bloodthirsty
rage in response to his school bullies. It’s a morbidly grim Afterschool
Special. Yet some movies are not suitable viewing for those who cannot
formulate the expediency of right and wrong—which usually means
children. Let Me In proves there are unprincipled adult filmmakers who can’t tell right from wrong either.
Bluenoses
who complain about the ratings system don’t understand that ratings are
not censorship nor a quality judgment but a guide to an out-of-control
industry that will do anything for a cheap thrill. This perverted fairy
tale about Owen’s guardian vampire degrades the vampire genre simply to
exploit adolescent sappiness. Let Me In draws an unclear
conclusion about social behavior, exploiting Owen’s suffering and Abby’s
treachery just for lurid kicks. Less than ambiguous, its portrayal of
teenage loneliness is dubious—replacing nerdiness (Owen endures an
excruciating wedgie) with the delight of murder and revenge,
disregarding social and psychological stability. It warps the
instructive purpose of fairytales and settles for horror movie
sensationalism.
Matt Reeves, who last perpetrated the ludicrous neo-Godzilla movie Cloverfield under
the aegis of TV schlockmeister J.J. Abrams, directs in the same style
of visual mumbo-jumbo: When Reeves’ camera can’t swish-pan, it blurs.
Either way you still can’t see the action clearly. (Expect
unsophisticated viewers to praise the “indirect” method of his submerged
swimming pool massacre climax.) The opening ambulance trauma scene
recalls the inanity of The Blair Witch Project, where degraded
technique (fuzzy obfuscation) is meant to create suspense. The same dumb
logic governs Reeves’ attitude toward Owen’s dilemma and Abby’s
malevolence; he confuses one’s pathos with the other’s immorality (she’s
always looking for the next meal anyway).
The 2009 Swedish film Let the Right One In originated
this confusion. Its title—borrowed from a 1993 Morrissey song that
expressed adolescent longing— sentimentalized moral ambiguity. Abby
cannot enter her friend’s home without being invited, requiring his
acceptance of evil. Bringing teen anguish to vampire lore (M. Night
Shyamalan-style rather than Buffy-style) was lamely nihilistic—and
inferior to the vampire romance Twilight that opened the same season. But critics preferred Let the Right One In for
its selfpitying view of adolescence. That’s also the sell point of this
American remake—add on trite political commentary by setting the story
in the nuclear test site Los Alamos, N.M., during the 1980s and
frequently cutting to TV broadcasts of President Reagan as a right-wing
ghoul warning: “America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good…”
So teen anguish gets smashed-up with facile politics, America-hatred
and routine Christianity bashing. (Owen’s mother is a grace-saying,
Bible-reading drunk whose estranged husband complains about “more of
your mother’s religious crap.”) Meanwhile, vampirism—though freaky— gets
idealized. But when Abby’s father (Richard Jenkins) mutilates himself
after fouling-up a blood-raid/murder-spree and she goes on her own
feeding frenzies— including neighborhood lovers and the only cop in
town—the gruesome bloodletting lacks the beautiful moral symmetry of the
all-time great adolescent horror movie, Brian De Palma’s 1976 teen
classic Carrie. Apparently, neither Reeves nor critics remember
De Palma’s part-satiric, part-melodramatic demarcation between Carrie’s
pathetic need to belong and her tragic acts of revenge.
True to millennial faithlessness, Let Me In rejects Carrie’s complexity,
emphasizing both Abby and Owen’s misery. Young scholar Jesse Tucker
wrote a brilliant essay describing De Palma’s final twist (where
Carrie’s hand grasps her schoolmate’s) as a forgiving gesture toward
commiseration. Reeves flips that beautiful motivation in the scene where
Owen ignores a reach for help from one of Abby’s victims. It’s an
obscene devolution of the genre. Children should not be exposed to this
lurid display of helplessness and pessimism—and adult viewers should be
wary of the nihilistic indulgence.