Let Me In (film)

Let Me In is a 2010 American-British vampire horror film directed and written by Matt Reeves, remaking the acclaimed 2008 Swedish film Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in), which was itself based on John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel of the same name. It stars Kodi Smit-McPhee as Owen, a bullied and lonely 12-year-old boy, and Chloë Grace Moretz as Abby, the strange girl next door who turns out to be a vampire kept in secrecy by a guardian (Richard Jenkins).^{1 • 2}

Production and origin

The Swedish original, released in the United Kingdom in 2009, earned major critical acclaim and was nominated for the BAFTA for Best Film Not in the English Language, winning the equivalent categories at the British Independent Film Awards and the London Critics Circle Film Awards. Hammer Films responded to that success by acquiring the rights to both the novel and the screenplay, and it promptly ordered an English-language remake.¹

The directorial helm was first offered to Tomas Alfredson, director of the Swedish version, but he refused; an associate said his basic thought was, "My movie said everything there was to say."^{1 • 7} Matt Reeves, then known for Cloverfield, was brought on to direct and write the screenplay. Reeves said the slightly changed title was a way to differentiate the film while signaling that audiences would find something familiar.⁸ He understood the story as a love story at its core, not wholly unlike Romeo and Juliet, the play Owen reads for school.⁹

Differences from the Swedish version

The remake keeps the original's mood and arc while changing the names to Abby and Owen and moving the setting to a wintry New Mexico town.¹⁰ The 1980s period is signaled differently from the Swedish film: where the first film's adults discussed the Soviet threat, the remake repeatedly shows Ronald Reagan's "Evil Empire" speech on television.⁶

Tonal changes. According to the British Board of Film Classification's case study, some of the Swedish film's stronger tonal moments are missing. In the Swedish film, as in the book, the young vampire Eli is believed to have been castrated, with a brief glimpse of mutilated genitals; the US version makes no mention of this and leaves the audience to assume Abby is, and always was, a girl. The Abby-guardian relationship is also less complicated: in the book the guardian is a pedophile, with hints of an inappropriate relationship in the Swedish film, while the US version shows an old photo-booth image of Abby and her guardian as children together, implying they shared a relationship similar to the one she has with Owen.¹ The Guardian's review noted the film is otherwise pretty faithful to the first movie, though it omits the local "sleazy drunk" community that gave the original much of its satirical flavor.¹¹

Censorship classifications

The film was submitted to the BBFC in September 2010 with a request for a 15 certificate, the same category awarded to the Swedish version. Examiners cited strong bloody violence, horror, and language as the principal classification issues, along with nudity and scenes of bullying. They accepted the bloodletting because it takes place within the clear context of a vampire fantasy and "is not inflicted to gratify sexual or sadistic urges," and classified the film 15.¹ In Australia it was classified MA 15+ for strong horror themes and violence, with a classification date of 30 September 2010.³

Reception

Critical response. The film holds an 88% Tomatometer from 235 critics and a 76% Popcornmeter from more than 50,000 audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, where the Critics Consensus calls it "the rare Hollywood remake that doesn't add insult to inspiration."² On Metacritic it scored 79, with 32 of 35 critic reviews positive and none negative.⁵ Roger Ebert wrote that those hoping to see a "vampire movie" would be surprised by a good film.⁵ The Hollywood Reporter credited the casting of the young leads, saying Smit-McPhee and Moretz "possess the soulful depth and pre-adolescent vulnerability necessary to keep it compellingly real," and Variety judged that Reeves had not ruined the elegant Swedish vampire story and had made some improvements, including a tense action-horror sequence in the middle of the film.⁵ A.O. Scott of The New York Times wrote that the relationship's subtext is not sexuality, as in Twilight or True Blood, but "the loneliness of children and their often unrecognized reservoirs of rage."⁵

Not all reviews were positive. Sukhdev Sandhu of the Daily Telegraph gave it 2/5, writing that "Let Me In doesn't need to exist unless, that is, the very notion of Swedish cinema is strange and unpalatable to you."² Reviewers frequently measured the film against its predecessor; one noted that the two films are so similar that any comparison reduces to a matter of preference.¹²

Box office. The film opened domestically on October 1, 2010 with $5,147,479 and grossed $12,134,935 in the United States, 44.8% of its $27,093,592 worldwide total, against a $20,000,000 budget.⁴ Its largest international markets included the United Kingdom ($2,236,692), Italy ($1,857,392), and Mexico ($1,316,517).⁴

Themes

Scholarly and critical discussion has focused on how the remake handles the source material's ambiguity. One academic account describes the film as a story about a 12-year-old boy living in Los Alamos with his divorced mother, in which the man living with Abby is not her father but a guardian whose sole purpose is killing people to harvest their blood for her.¹³ Comparative scholarship argues that while both films use the same basic story of a boy befriended by a child vampire, they express different cultural moments: Abby "can only be a girl," and sexuality plays a far greater role in the remake's meaning, so that Abby and Owen, unlike Eli and Oskar, do not remain innocent in some way.¹⁴

References

1. Let Me In (2010), BBFC case study
2. Let Me In, Rotten Tomatoes
3. LET ME IN, Australian Classification
4. Let Me In (2010), Box Office Mojo
5. Let Me In critic reviews, Metacritic
6. Let Me In: Same Vampires, More Sentiment, KQED
7. Matt Reeves sinks his teeth into 'Let Me In', Los Angeles Times
8. SDCC '10 Interview: Let Me In Director Matt Reeves, ComingSoon.net
9. A Remake with Bite: Let Me In, Tribeca Film
10. 'Let Me In': A terrifying adaptation, Los Angeles Times
11. Let Me In – review, The Guardian
12. Let Me In review, Under the Radar
13. Let Me In: Children, Killers, in Beautiful Vessels: Children and Gender in Cinema
14. Becoming Vampire: Difference and the Vampire in Popular Culture

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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