Poster art for the film

(6) LET ME IN (2010)

It wouldn’t be a top ten list of horror films without at least one vampire film.

Although is it just me or are there very few vampire films that are genuine horror (as in genuinely scary)? Is it just that we’re too familiar with vampires (or that they’re too played out) for them to be a true source of horror? Sure, there are many vampire films, but they seem to me to be effectively films in (or at least combining) other genres. (And don’t get me started on the abomination that is Twilight).

Don’t get me wrong – I’m a fan of quite a few vampire films, which I rank in my special mentions (and indeed stake my top ten vampire films), but they tend to not quite cross my threshold of genuine horror.

And again, don’t get me wrong – I have been genuinely scared (in that I had actual nightmares – my horror litmus test!) by vampire novels, including the big daddy of them all, Dracula. (Although it probably helps if you read it in your childhood with a fever). Not to mention Stephen King’s Dracula in Maine, also known as Salem’s Lot.

However, it takes a return to the depiction of vampires as alien predatory entities to humanity to invoke horror on the screen for me – the shark-like predators of 30 Days of Night, or the Lovecraftian parasites in the TV series The Strain.

So that is why I found Let Me In a refreshingly revamped horror film – revamped also from its origin in the Swedish novel and film Let The Right One In. For one thing, there is just something inherently unsettling about child vampires – in this case, the vampire girl played by Chloe Grace Moritz. For another, the horror was not so much from any scares in it, but again more conceptual or existential – particularly in the relationship between the vampire girl and an alienated and bullied boy. In the words of TV Tropes, the film “is most notable for being simultaneously heartwarming and horrifying. Although it has few outright scares, it can be a deeply disturbing movie, as the main characters’ relationship invokes both young love and a temptation into darkness”.

You know it’s a good horror film, when Stephen King raves about it – “Let Me In is a genre-busting triumph. Not just a horror film, but the best American horror film in the last 20 years.”

RATING: 4 STARS****

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