Let Me In
It’s one of those movies that have been out on disc for a while now, but I finally got around to watching it. It’s about a nerdy socially-awkward bullied 12-year-old boy who befriends a nice girl with a “dark secret.” It’s definitely a movie best enjoyed if you don’t know much about it, and I highly recommend it, therefore I highly recommend not reading the rest of this post if you haven’t seen the movie. Go watch the movie, then come back here.
The post by this blogger is an excellent discussion of the moral issues surrounding the movies. Because that blogger comes from a religious Christian background, he is able to identify evil when he sees it, unlike some more bobo New Age moral relativist types who perhaps don’t get why the vampire girl, Abby, is evil.
It’s interesting that several times throughout the movie she tells Owen that she’s not a girl. She doesn’t consider herself human. To her, humans are food. We normally don’t consider animals evil when it’s in their nature to kill other animals. Take the typical housecat. Not evil, right? Yet the housecat will go out and kill birds who are on the same intellectual level as the cat. And the cat doesn’t even need to kill them in order to live, because the cat has a human caretaker who provides ample food. But cats aren’t evil because they are just animals, and killing other animals are in their nature.
So is Abby like a cat? Or, because she’s intelligent enough to have a conversation at the level of a normal 12-year-old girl, she’s intelligent enough to be evil?
One can see Owen as an extremely vulnerable child who is easily taken advantage of by an evil person, or in this case an evil vampire, because she is the only one who gives him what he craves which is friendship. The scene where Abby eats the candy that Owen gives her so she doesn’t hurt his feelings, even though eating human food will make her sick and she will have to vomit it back up, perhaps tricks some people into thinking that she isn’t so bad. But we know that in the end, Owen will wind up a sad old serial killer like her previous caretaker. If she truly cared for Owen, she’d abandon him.
It’s interesting to try to place the characters in the movie into the Dungeons and Dragons alignment matrix. The bullies at school are chaotic evil? Abby is chaotic evil? Or is she neutral because she only kills to eat and to protect her friend, and not for pleasure? Evil people don’t have to be evil all the time, and they can show kindness and concern for their friends and family despite being evil.
However, I think it’s not evil that she killed the bullies. They got what they deserved, and they might have killed Owen, although that part is not clear. They probably only wanted Owen to think he was going to die, but they might have accidentally drowned him if Abby hadn’t saved him.
Lion of the Blogosphere 
Isn’t it a remake of the Swedish movie “Let the Right One In” (the latter being arguably better)?
cannotwest
February 10, 2013 at 6:37 PM
The Swedish version is much better.
Lion, you have to see the original. Much better movie.
Also, in the Swedish movie, it is clear that the vampire “girl” is a hermaphrodite.
Jay
February 10, 2013 at 7:07 PM
Yes, it’s a remake. I’ve only seen the Swedish version because I’m a snide status jockey like that.
As for the morality involved…
Vampires are interesting story characters because they’re conscious of their actions. The difference between cats and birds versus humans and vampires is that the former are moral patients (arguably) while the latter are moral agents.
Many people contend it’s wrong to torture animals for fun. Cruelty and abuse harms the interests of those animals. What’s interesting about vampires is that they’re supposed to eat humans. In INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, Louis (Brad Pitt) discovers he can live on the blood of animals. Lestat (Tom Cruise) flatly dismisses the notion: “I wouldn’t call it *living*.” Well, that presents a rather interesting moral conundrum regarding humans vis-a-vis animals.
Lestat embraces who he is — an immortal killer, who loves to dine on the finest aristocratic blood — while Louis suffers from self-loathing and guilt. Brad Pitt later said he hated making the movie, especially since he had “the bitch role.” /digression
Anyway, for some reason I think it’s perverse and ridiculous to believe that 12 year-olds “deserve” death for bullying. If it was the only way to save Owen’s life, then it’s understandable (justifiable homicide), but I’m guessing there were other alternatives short of killing.
Vince, the Lionhearted
February 10, 2013 at 7:53 PM
If you like smart horror, I strongly recommend Lars von Trier’s Antichrist. Some don’t appreciate its non-linearity, but its politically incorrect themes are up your alley.
nooffensebut
February 10, 2013 at 7:07 PM
It sounds almost as an allegory for the common real-life situation in which an unpopular young person falls in with the first person to befriend him, learning too late that the “friend” is a bad element.
Peter
ironrailsironweights
February 10, 2013 at 7:28 PM
The myth is that all vampires can only sustain themselves on human blood, so are vampires evil? Yeah, because they are humans who are inherently dangerous to other human beings. Can they do anything about it? Not really. So uh, don’t invite them into your home. Evil is a loaded word because it implies intentionality. People naturally want to punish purposeful misbehavior. However science tells all consciousness is biased toward our basic hard-wired instincts.
It was definitely the film’s intent was to portray Abby as a wolf in sheep clothing though. Even the film’s Swedish title “Let the Right One In” suggests this theme.
Interestingly, Abby’s gender ambiguity and asexuality was played up in the Swedish film. There the lead actress had shorter hair than the male lead. They even overdubbed her voice with a slightly deeper one. One bit that showed up in Swedish film but not the American one—presumably removed because it was graphic—was a brief, unexplained shot showing scarring where Abby/Eli’s male genitalia would be, implying “she” was physically castrated at some point. The idea that she’s “not a girl” was meant to be taken literally. Not only does Abby not feel love, she is implied to have no real sexual urges. She sees those feelings as a way to gain compliance from Owen and Thomas.
Papa Smurf
February 10, 2013 at 8:12 PM
The movie is an allegory about pedophilia; specifically the variety that seems to be excused or laughed off by society today, where an attractive adult seduces a youth, typically a high schooler.
Paul Rise
February 10, 2013 at 8:54 PM
It’s easy to mock people who question conventional notions of evil but the more one considers HBD, early childhood development and all that, the notion of just what is evil becomes burdensome.
Bon vivant Carl Panzram should surely be considered evil but then there’s all that pesky business of his extraordinarly miserable youth to contend with. Rockstar Charlie Manson just about made it Hitler levels, I think his mother turning tricks in the next room (same room?) had something to do with that. I know my priest would get all lathered up about my suggesting a certain relativism about what is defined as evil, and to be certain, I’m relatively sure he’s not buggering the young boys. Covering up for his colleague, I’m not so sure of.
Abby is construed as evil,but what if she only ate Al Quaeida terrorists? Wouldn’t she be a hero then?
The kid who wigged out and killed 20 some kids in Newtown, yeah sure he’s evil. Of course we have collectively killed 475 and counting children by drone strikes, for the most part people are okay with that.
S_McCoy The Winged Lion
February 10, 2013 at 9:19 PM
I would hope HBD types will be familiar with Judith Harris’ “The Nurture Assumption”.
teageegeepea
February 13, 2013 at 9:15 PM
I thought the American version was better than the Swedish versions. American characters are more likeable.
The question is not whether Vampires are evil. The question is, are they dangerous and should they be destroyed. The obvious answer is yes.
map
February 11, 2013 at 1:02 AM
The classic vampire, like Abby, is evil by its very nature. Its very substance is only a corruption of a human corpse, and it can only exist by continuing to try to fill its metaphysical emptiness with human blood.
A vampire is not a moral agent. Its will is only to survive and continue to feed, and all its intelligence will always be oriented toward this purpose. It simply cannot will anything else, and certainly is not capable of love (i.e. willing the good of another for his own sake).
A classic vampire resembles an intelligent predatory animal, but with an important difference. An animal is metaphysically “legitimate.” It has its own form, is good in itself, and its instincts to survive and reproduce are good as well, just as its prey’s desire to escape being eaten is good.
(In Catholic metaphysics, anything created by God is good. Evil is not a substance, but a deficiency or corruption. Any form or strength evil possesses depends on the corruption or parasitism of things that have substance and are good in themselves. A vampire is the closest thing one can imagine to a totally evil being, because it is a metaphysical black hole. Its form and existence is entirely dependent on the corruption and consumption of the good.)
TLDR: No human being can *be* evil; humans can choose to be evil, or be corrupted by evil, but do not actually *become* evil. Vampires are always evil, and cannot choose otherwise.
David Flory
February 11, 2013 at 1:36 AM
Edit: I meant to write “No human being can *be* evil; humans can choose to *do* evil…”
David Flory
February 11, 2013 at 1:40 AM
In the original novel, which is excellent by the way, it becomes quite clear that Eli (in the original version he/she also has an ambiguous name which makes more sense) is a castrated boy, In fact his castration back in the 16th century, or whenver, is graphically described and is part of how he became a vampire in the first place. The book is much creepier than either film – Håkan’s disfigurement in the book from acid is truly disgusting and dehumanizing in a way a film can’t capture..
It is interesting if the American version actually implies that Oskar would grow up to eventually just become another Håkan. That makes sense if you think about it. I don’t get the impression that Lindquist, the writer of the original novel, thought that part through, we are supposed to think it’s a “happy” ending. Oskar and Eli are depicted as kindred souls, too pure to live in our debased society. I don’t think Lindquist thinks of Eli as “evil” at all, just mistreated and abused – in that sense the original author is probably a typical SWPL Swede. My sense reading the book was that it is basically the revenge fantasy of a man who was probably bullied pretty severely in high school. What makes the book worth reading is the author’s gift for atmosphere and detail.
Peter the Shark
February 11, 2013 at 2:45 AM
The American remake is superior to the original in every way with the exception of how the murder scene in the pool was filmed. The child actors were better and more sympathetic, there was less of the terrible CGI, and the unnecessary and distracting subplot involving the neighbors in the apartment complex was changed and minimized. If the original was an 8/10, the remake is a 9.5/10. Plus, the scene where Richard Jenkins gets in the car accident is the best murder-set-to-pop-music scene I can think of since Christian Bale killed Jared Leto in ‘American Psycho.’
Robert
February 11, 2013 at 12:50 PM
Rotten Tomatoes gave LTROI a score of 96, which is several points too high. The consensus view is that IMDB movie scores are by juvenile males and RT scores are by SWPLs.
So my rule is: discount RT scores by five points for each major element that really excites SWPLs. That’s five because it’s Swedish and five because it’s got a major tranny character. 86 is about right and still better than LMI (which I didn’t finish.)
The question isn’t whether Abby is evil; s/he is hellspawn. The question is whether Owen is evil (harboring a vile predator) or under a spell. “I’m so lonely” is a shit reason to give a pass to that thing.
runindogs
February 11, 2013 at 1:05 PM
Wow, thanks for the traffic! I wrote the blog post you linked to, and am quite honored to be quoted. I’m very glad that my analysis of the movie found some appreciation, and I’m just as glad to see other people pointing out the subtler implications of the film. It’s good to see people having similar perceptions after watching it — reading other reviews of what a “great love story” it is, I was afraid I was the only one.
Reece
February 11, 2013 at 2:15 PM
I’m just wondering: isn’t it possible for a vampire to drink blood from a human but not enough to kill them? Visit a blood bank? Too science-fictiony, I know…
SFG
February 11, 2013 at 8:21 PM
I agree, the fact that there are other ways to obtain blood and murder is the choice supports the statement that she is chaotic evil. A chaotic neutral would have enough moral fiber to make some sacrifices as well and would almost certainly go to a blood bank, harvest blood from farm animals, or leave their victims alive. Abby is a monster that is incapable of such decision and is stuck as a chaotic evil. Owen is a chaotic neutral as he still feels remorse and care, although he gains evil tendencies towards the end of the movie.
Bob Jones
February 11, 2013 at 9:04 PM