Director Craig Moss’s Let Us In is a gateway horror film based on the urban legend of black-eyed children. As an early introduction for preteens to science fiction and horror elements, it offers some amusing sequences, but teens and adults will likely find the proceedings predictable and the humor corny.
Twelve-year-old Emily (Makenzie Moss) is still reeling from the accidental death of her older sister and has become the target of verbal bullying from the mean girls at her middle school. She is working on a science fair project to contact extraterrestrial life using common electronics parts with her best friend, 10-year-old Christopher (O’Neill Monahan). This is where childhood imagination or massive suspension of disbelief for viewers older than the early elementary school years becomes necessary, and I don’t mean that sarcastically.
Meanwhile, local teens start disappearing when intimidating black-eyed kids come calling, asking “Will you let us in?” These hoodie-wearing nasties won’t easily take no for an answer, and when they try to break into Emily’s house, no adults outside of her skeptical but loving parents — including the cops, of course — believe her. When a close friend of hers disappears, our daring duo of Emily and the reluctant Christopher go searching for the truth. It seems that creepy elderly neighbor Mr. Munch (Tobin Bell) may have some vital information about the black-eyed villains.
As seasoned genre-film fans can already tell, the Let Us In screenplay by Moss and Joe Callero follows familiar beats galore, so there are no huge surprises in store. Other issues include the fact that the villains are made vulnerable by a certain element, but that element seemingly had no negative effect on them earlier in the story (no spoilers here). The dialogue is loaded with awkward slang jokes and lines such as “I think I just sharted.”
As mentioned earlier, where Let Us In works best is as a gateway science fiction–horror film for youngsters interested in the genre but not ready for heavier stuff, or whose parents want to avoid sexual content. Fright-fare fans have fond memories of their first such movies, whether they were the original Invaders from Mars, Ben, Gremlins, The Monster Squad, or the like. For some kids, this will be one of their first gateway films. With that in mind, Moss succeeds in delivering a technically sound film that is a lighthearted introduction to scare-fare tropes without being gory or overly scary.
Let Us In, from Samuel Goldwyn Films, will be available On Demand and Digital from July 2, 2021.
