Abby is the female lead of the American-British film version titled Let Me In. The character she is partially based upon is Eli, one of the main characters from the original novel and the subsequent Swedish film of the same name. Both characters are vampires in secret, and while they share many similarities, Abby was created to be her own character, just as the American-British film was inspired by the novel rather than simply being a remake of the Swedish film, according to the director of Let Me In, Matt Reeves.
Overview[]
In both the original novel and the Swedish film adaptation, Eli is a vampire from Sweden who survived for more than 200 years. He is a boy who had his genitalia removed (as opposed to a simple castration) and he lives as a girl. Eli starts getting feelings for Oskar and he tries his best and hardest to keep him from harm. They fall in love.
Abby, the female lead in Let Me In, is based on her Swedish counterpart to a certain degree, though there is significant variation between the two. Unlike Eli, Abby was born and raised in North America, presumably before the formation of the United States of America. Chloë Grace Moretz, the actress who portrayed Abby, stated that her character is permanently frozen at the physical age of twelve due to the effects of vampirism, and she was born two or three centuries before the film's events, placing the year of her birth around 1671 at the earliest. Furthermore, Moretz also revealed that her character was the daughter of a plantation owner by confirming that Abby was born a girl, as opposed to a boy like Eli (originally Elias).
Further variation between the two characters can be seen because of Håkan, who is Eli's companion, and Thomas, who was Abby's servant. While they both posed as the presumably single father of a young girl, their reasons for doing so are quite different. Håkan serves Eli because of his pedophilia. Thomas' loyalty to Abby is implied to be the result of genuine feelings for her, rather than lust, as is shown in Let Me In and it's comic book prequel, Let Me In: Crossroads. Also, Håkan was an adult by the time he came to serve Eli, where as Thomas knew Abby from when he was a child.
Let The Right One In (novel)[]
In the novel, Eli is a roughly 200 year old vampire. Born sometime around the 1760s in Norrköping, Eli was originally a young peasant boy named Elias who was taken from his family by "The Man in the Wig", who was a vampire nobleman who not only castrated Elias but removed his penis as well, and then he imprisoned him. Elias escaped, and he adopted a feminine appearance in reaction to the abuse, and he allowed outsiders to perceive him as a young girl. By the twentieth century, Eli manipulates an older man named Håkan, a former teacher and a pedophile, into becoming his servant and making him responsible for procuring blood for Eli. By the end of the book, Håkan dies and Eli and Oskar run away together. The nature of their relationship remains obscure.
Lindqvist's novel, titled Let the Old Dreams Die, reveals that Oskar and Eli made a blood pact shortly after leaving Blackeberg by turning Oskar into a vampire. By 2008, the two travel to Barcelona, Spain, pursued by a police officer who has become obsessed with solving the mystery of Oskar's disappearance.
''Let The Right One In'' (film)[]
In the Swedish adaptation, Eli's character is largely similar to her portrayal in the book, though the details regarding her background are intentionally vague, leaving the character open to personal interpretation.
Oskar met Eli in the playground of his run-down apartment complex where he spent much of his time. Despite Eli's desire for solitude by sensing their shared loneliness, he befriends Oskar. They find a common ground in their mutual fascination with puzzles, including a Rubik's Cube. Following Håkan's death, Eli spends more time with Oskar and he agrees to go steady with him. Eventually, Oskar discovers Eli's true nature as a vampire when he attempts to form a blood pact between them. Eli, having not fed for several days, was unable to resist licking the blood that fell on the floor from Oskar's cut hand. Though initially disturbed by this, after Oskar ran away from the house of his negligent father, he refuses to stay away from Eli and the two become closer.
When Lacke tries to kill Eli in order to avenge the deaths of Jocke and Virginia, Oskar stops him at the last moment, and Eli kills and feeds on Lacke. After Lacke's death, Eli had to leave to avoid being caught by the local residents and authorities, leaving Oskar back in a state of loneliness and misery. Eli returns to rescue Oskar from being either maimed or drowned by a group of bullies at the bathhouse, killing three of them in the process. The two gathered their belongings, and they fled on a train together.
''Let Me In''[]
According to Chloë Grace Moretz, Abby was born two or three hundred years before the events in the film titled Let Me In which was set in 1983. She stated that Abby was a plantation owner's daughter and their family was hard-working, but they are destitute and they are forced to rely on Abby's wealthy uncle, who was a secret vampire, for financial support. Moretz revealed that it was Abby's uncle who was responsible for making Abby a vampire. This event was depicted in a scene that did not make it to the final product. The scene revealed how Abby was attacked and infected by her uncle when she was a child, freezing her at the physical age of twelve.
Prior to the film's events, Abby met and befriended a young boy named Thomas. Thomas carried a photo of Abby and himself from when he was a child. He and Abby are companions for many years and he protected her. He stalked and he killed the people so he could harvest blood to feed to Abby.
A graphic novel that was called Let Me In: Crossroads was made as a prequel to Let Me In. During the events in Crossroads, Abby and Thomas hid in the rural countryside by living a secluded life while Thomas posed as Abby's reclusive father during the day. At night, he continued to provide Abby with the blood that she needed. Abby gradually befriends her neighbor's son, a young boy named Jon Dixon. Thomas became increasingly jealous of their relationship, and he was convinced that Abby is seeking to replace him with a younger companion. In a rage, he nearly beats Jon to death with a flashlight. With Jon covered in his own blood and on the verge of death, Abby is unable to resist the urge for fresh blood, and she feeds on him, thereby turning him into a vampire. Jon's time as a vampire was short-lived; a salesman who was a serial killer sets Jon on fire while he is invading Abby's home. After Jon is burned to death, an enraged Abby avenges her fallen friend by killing the salesman. With their hunting ground compromised, Abby and Thomas immediately gather their belongings and relocate to Los Alamos, an American city in New Mexico where the film takes place.
Shortly after arriving in Los Alamos, Abby and Thomas, still posing as father and daughter, move into an apartment complex where a twelve year old boy named Owen lives with his devout divorced mother. Owen took an immediate interest in his new neighbor, but Abby is hesitant to form any new relationships because of her true nature. However, she begins to bond with the bullied loner despite her reluctance to do so, causing them to spend more and more time together, much to Thomas' chagrin. At the same time, Abby was forced to take matters into her own hands after Thomas fails to acquire enough blood to satisfy her needs. In order to survive, Abby attacks and kills one of her neighbors, an act which infuriated Thomas, who had to hide the body in order to protect Abby. After his second attempt to gather the blood fails and results in his imminent capture, Thomas protects Abby by burning his own face with the acid to prevent the police from identifying him. When Abby visits him from outside a hospital window, she is visibly saddened by her companion's condition. In his final act of service as her familiar, Thomas leans out of the window and offers his own blood to Abby; she accepts by gently biting his neck. Due to the sudden loss of blood, Thomas loses consciousness, and he falls to his death from the hospital window.
Thomas' loss causes Abby to focus her full attention on Owen who became increasingly infatuated with her. When he sought to solidify their relationship with a blood pact, Abby was nearly consumed with desire and she narrowly avoided attacking Owen by feeding on their neighbor, Virginia. Although Owen was shocked, frightened and generally unsure about what to make of the revelation concerning Abby, he comes to accept that he depends on her, and the two became closer as a result.
One morning, a detective's investigation into Thomas' killings led him to Abby's apartment where Owen had spent the night. Upon entering the bathroom where Abby slept, and unaware of her weakness to sunlight, he begins to remove the black-out tape that was covering the windows, causing Abby's skin to crack and burn as the sunlight shines on her leg. Her life was narrowly saved by Owen who intervened in order to save Abby's life. Taking advantage of Owen's distraction, Abby's feral instincts caused her to pounce on the detective. Upon overwhelming him, she chewed into his neck and she proceeded to drain his blood, causing the detective to die in agony while a distraught Owen closes the door, unable to watch.
Realizing that her sanctuary in Los Alamos was compromised, she quickly disposes of the detective's remains before bidding Owen farewell, leaving in a taxi after nightfall. However, she ultimately decides against leaving Owen, and upon finding him at his school, she discovers his life to be in danger as a group of bullies attempted to drown him in a pool. Crashing through the pool room's skylight, Abby violently slaughters the boys, literally ripping their bodies apart and tossing the pieces into the blood-stained water. Reunited, Abby and Owen depart Los Alamos together.
In the final scene of the film, Owen was sitting in a train, guarding Abby's trunk. While she is hiding inside her trunk, to avoid the sunlight's damaging effects, Abby communicates with Owen via the Morse Code, which he replies to before humming his favorite song, "Eat Some Now, Save Some For Later".
According to the director and cast, Abby and Owen's fates are intentionally left ambiguous and left up to the viewers' interpretation. However, Kodi Smit-McPhee's personal opinion, the actor who portrayed Owen, was that Abby would eventually find a new familiar to do her bidding when Owen became too old to serve her by indicating that Owen like Thomas before him would ultimately be cast aside.
Although John Ajvide Lindqvist, the author of the original story, wrote the short story called Let The Old Dreams Die as a sequel, it is important to note that it technically applies to the Swedish version that was called Let The Right One In. According to Matt Reeves, Let Me In was largely inspired by Lindqvist's novel and it was based on it to a certain extent. However, it was ultimately it's own story that was separate from the Swedish novel/film continuity. The sequel did not apply to the American film, leaving the ending to Let Me In vague as Reeves intended. Further evidence that distinguishes the American storyline from it's Swedish counterpart was Let Me In: Crossroads. This graphic novel prequel that was created specifically for the American film without any involvement or influence from Lindqvist established a backstory for Abby and Thomas and it detailed their experiences shortly before their arrival in Los Alamos. In short, Crossroads was the prequel to Let Me In, but it did not apply to Let The Right One In. By the same token, Let The Old Dreams Die was a sequel to the Swedish novel, but not to the American film, meaning that Eli and Oskar's fates are not necessarily the same as Abby and Owen's since they are all technically separate characters (The Swedish and American versions respectively with similar backgrounds).
In the film, Abby showed an interest in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet by quoting one of the lines ("I must be gone and live or stay and die.") in a message that she left in her living room where Owen had stayed. She also had a strong interest in puzzles as shown by several different kinds of puzzle games that are in her apartment; this fascination also enabled her to solve a Rubik’s Cube in a single night, much to Owen's surprise and amazement. As a vampire, she possessed great physical strength, making her capable of ripping a human being into pieces when she was dangerously enraged. The comic revealed her other abilities, such as accelerated healing, night vision and the ability to fly without wings.
Abby's condition as a vampire included several vulnerabilities, one of which was the fatal weakness to sunlight. The slight exposure to the sun caused her skin to crack and boil; more exposure would result in her body becoming consumed with fire as was seen when Virginia was exposed to the daylight shortly after Abby infected her. As with sunlight, she was also vulnerable to fire and extreme heat. In addition to her high temperatures, another key weakness that Abby gained as a vampire is her inability to safely enter the private residences such as a person's home or room unless she receives an invitation via the verbal communication from the owner.
For reasons that are unknown to herself, entering without permission caused her body to bleed with fatal consequences. However, the process could be stopped with the phrase, "You could come in." Aside from this, she was free to enter public areas (such as stores, hospital lobbies and public schools to name a few) without the need for a verbal invitation.
Trivia[]
- In Let Me In, Abby's vampiric transformation was described as adolescence that went wrong.
Gallery[]