For YMMV on the original book and Swedish film, see Let the Right One In.
- Adorkable: Owen in his date scenes with Abby comes across as utterly innocent, adorable and awkward, and from the way Abby smiles at him she considers him to be very cute and sweet as well. From when they go to the arcade and Owen excitedly acts like buying her his favorite sweets is a grand romantic gesture, to the scene in the cellar where Abby asks Owen what he wanted to do and he just breaks out into a big, goofy grin.
- Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Abby’s character is much more ambiguous in the film. Does she truly love Owen or is she just grooming him into becoming her slave so he'll procure blood for her? Or is it a bit of both? The book’s author hates this interpretation and in a sequel short story he wrote Eli/Abby turned Oskar/Owen the very night they ran away, but the film's director was unaware of the sequel and said the ending is meant to be ambiguous.
- Also, was Abby being entirely truthful about the extent of her Immortal Immaturity? There's evidence for both arguments. For people who think she's just an adult in a child's body, there's the fact she's clearly the dominant personality in her and Thomas's relationship. On the other hand she shows signs of being rather guileless and childlike: when she kills a man she just leaves the body in the open, she likes playing with toys and puzzles, and she shows herself to be rather innocent about social norms like when she crawls naked into Owen's bed and seems surprised that he's startled. Owen is a timid, sensitive, scrawny boy, and would be a terrible choice as a familiar, so her interest in him is probably due to a childish crush.
- Judging by his phone call with his father about whether people can be evil and how much more he suffers throughout the film than other iterations of the character, Owen's motivations for running away with Abby can be seen as rather ambiguous. Does he leave with Abby by the end of the film because he loves her? Or is his life in Los Alamos just so awful that he sees living with Abby as the choice that involves the least amount of suffering for him despite the fact he thinks she might be evil? In addition, did Owen have a budding dark side, or was he just an abused child lashing out at the world for how it treated him? While he did show disturbing behavior, like reenacting murdering Kenny with a knife, Kenny had been torturing him daily with no one protecting Owen, so it seems like it was the only way he knew how to cope. Also, when Owen is actually exposed to violence, it deeply upsets him. When he split Kenny's ear, he looked horrified, and when the police officer was murdered by Abby, Owen found it so distressing that he covered his ears to blot the man's death screams out.
- Owen's father. Did he not care about his own son, or was he genuinely concerned about his son's well being and treatment? During the phone call he was rather brusque to Owen, but his own son had called him at random at night and started to ask him rather bizarre questions. Since he has no way of knowing about Abby, it's hard to fault him for assuming Owen's mother, who throughout the film was shown to neglect him and drink herself unconscious with him around, to be the cause of his son's distress.
- Did Thomas warn Abby to stay away from Owen as he was jealous of their relationship, or did he do so because he didn't want Abby to groom an innocent boy into killing for her like she did with him?
- Anti-Climax Boss: The police officer, who throughout the film is shown to be a competent detective and is on the verge of catching Abby. Then when he enters her apartment and finds her sleeping in the bathroom he's distracted by Owen and Abby promptly rips his throat out. His body is then hidden by Owen and Abby.
- Awesome Music: It's a Michael Giacchino score, so this is a given. The music manages to be sinister and tender in equal measure, with "Parting Sorrows"
being utterly heartbreaking as Abby leaves Owen. - Catharsis Factor: After the whole film has shown us the sheer lack of love in Owen's life, it's hard not to cheer when he runs away with Abby after she saves him from the bullies.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- As mentioned under the Foe Yay Shipping sections, the first scene with the bullies is filmed disturbingly like a sexual assault. Kenny and his friends grab Owen and pin him the the ground as they pull and tug at his clothes as Owen cries and begs him to stop. The scene concludes with the shirtless boys walking away from a humiliated Owen crumpled on the floor.
- Kenny's obsession with Owen and love of hurting him go beyond being a simple school yard bully, as shown in his habit of calling Owen a "girl" and a "She", including a scene where he literally whips Owen then proceeds to pull and play with his hair. He also seems very interested in watching Owen undress, sneering that he doesn't go to swimming because he doesn't want "everyone to see what a fucking little girl he is". All in all, Kenny comes across as more of a stalker than a bully at times.
- Draco in Leather Pants: While Abby's character is meant to be ambiguous, many viewers see her as morally pure because she’s nice to Owen and needs to feed on blood because she’s a vampire. This ignores the fact that she repeatedly murders innocent people without remorse, with the director even stating that her murders are inexcusable, and it's not clear whether she truly loves Owen or is manipulating him to become her new servant. Interestingly, Owen seems to give her this treatment in-universe.
- Esoteric Happy Ending: The movie ends with Owen leaving his old, miserable life in Los Alamos behind to start a new one with Abby. Sounds like a happy ending, right? Except even if you go with the most optimistic interpretation of the story, that Abby genuinely loves Owen and she'll make him a vampire so they'll be together forever, which is canon in the novel version, there's still the fact that mentally they're both pubescent children and they're going to have to live a nomadic life committing murder for the rest of their lives.
- Foe Yay Shipping: Kenny's antagonism of Owen in the American version borders on this, as he seems very obsessed with making his life hell. There's even a scene where Owen is writing a note for Abby and Kenny's just stares at him, looking jealous. Early in the movie, he pins him down, while shirtless, to give him a wedgie, in a scene that feels rather rapey, and in another scene, he threatens to sodomize Owen with a metal pole he picked up to protect himself.Also, in a rather disturbing scene, Kenny watches Owen use the bathroom, before giving him a sadomasochistic style whipping, while screaming at Owen to repeat his words as he plays and pulls at his hair.Kenny: Say it, little girl. Say it!!
- Fridge Brilliance: Abby tells Owen to strike back hard against the bullies to get them to stop, and to use his knife if they keep harassing him. She then tells him that she will help him if all else fails. Owen's confrontation with the bullies plays out in that exact order: Owen strikes Kenny with a pole to defend himself. When the bullies return much later for revenge, Owen attempts to defend himself with his knife, but that fails, so Abby helps him. And boy, does she help him.
- Fridge Horror: This post discusses a rather dark interpretation of the significance of the Now & Later jingle in the remake.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Let Me In casts Chloë Moretz as the vampire girl who's steadily soaked in her own blood if not invited properly. Moretz would later be cast as Carrie.
- Dylan Minnette playing a Barbaric Bully becomes this when he would go on to star in 13 Reasons Why, where he fights against bullies.
- It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The remake has several scenes that are word-for-word from the original. This has not gone unnoticed. Especially since Reeves promised a new, different take on the novel and instead delivered another remake, complete with scenes and concepts that only existed in the Swedish film and weren't in the novel to begin with.
- Mind Game Ship: Abby/Owen. It's canon, according to Chloe Grace Moretz, who said that Abby loves Owen in her own way, but is also manipulating him to replace her caretaker.
- Moral Event Horizon:
- While Abby and Owen are sympathetic characters they arguably both cross it by the film's end, Abby by murdering innocent people for their blood without remorse, with her murder of the police officer being especially brutal, and Owen by declining to help the policeman and letting Abby kill him, which the director stated was meant to show that he's gone too far to turn back.
- Jimmy and Kenny trying to either half blind Owen or kill him by drowning him in the school pool while the rest were distracted by a dumpster fire. Even one of the other bullies felt that was taking it too far.
- Narm Charm: Kenny was normally violent with Owen, but in one scene, he gives him a Wedgie, an act which is normally Played for Laughs in most bullying scenarios. However, the scene feels disturbingly rapey as Owen is pinned down while begging his bullies to stop, loses bladder control (and is mocked for it), and it's not helped that the bullies are shirtless in that scene. This may be intentional, to show that it's no laughing matter to the one experiencing it.
- No Yay: Kenny and Owen. As noted under Foe Yay Shipping, Kenny's bullying and abuse of Owen comes across as rather disturbingly sexual at times, with him constantly calling Owen a "little girl", threatening to rape him and even a masochist style scene where he whips him. What makes it this trope, besides both characters being 12 year old boys, is that Owen is obviously traumatized by the abuse Kenny inflicts on him and is terrified of him.
- Realism-Induced Horror: While the film is grounded in fantastic elements with Abby and her vampiric nature many of the most horrific scenes in the film are derived from more mundane elements such as child neglect and school bullying. The director Matt Reeves said he wanted the scenes of Owen being assaulted by Kenny to be as horrifying to watch as Abby's kill scenes.
- Signature Scene:
- Thomas's failed hunt and subsequent car crash. Even people who disliked the remake admitted the cinematography was very impressive and it was an improvement over the scene where Håkan was captured in the original.
- Owen's phone call to his father. It was featured heavily in the promos and trailers of the film and it was one of the most heartbreaking scenes of the movie.
- Special Effect Failure: Abby's vampire attacks are very obviously done with CGI. Though some would argue that this only makes them even creepier.
- The Woobie: Owen. His life was a living hell at the beginning of the film, he's horribly abused physically and mentally at school by bullies every day, and he lives with his mother, who's an alcoholic who neglects him. The closest he ever gets to being a normal child is when he plays with his Rubik's cube on his own in the freezing cold of the jungle gym at the apartment complex where he lives. When he finally meets someone who shows him some care and affection, it turns out she's a vampire, and she gets extremely close to killing him. When he realizes the person he loves is a vampire, he goes to his parents for comfort and advice, which both totally ignore. It's especially heartbreaking when Owen's on the phone to his father, all but begging him to listen to him in tears. After that, he goes through even more trauma; Abby kills a man in front of him, and he's tortured and nearly drowned by his bullies.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Thomas in this version, despite being a serial killer. He's been Abby's familiar for decades and by the start of the film he's an exhausted, guilt-ridden old man whose not sure whether he can continue killing for Abby any more. Despite giving his entire life to Abby she for the most part treats him like a servant. Regardless, he's so loyal to Abby that when he gets caught he pours acid on himself to protect her. When Abby sees him at the hospital his face has been totally destroyed to the point he cant even speak and she herself appears enormously guilty and heartbroken over what's become of him and how she treated him.
