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"Mature Content Warning!" |
Abby is the titular deuteragonist of the 2010 horror film Let Me In, which is based on the Swedish novel Let the Right One In. She is a child vampire who kills innocent humans for their blood, while seemingly befriending a lonely boy named Owen who is being neglected and bullied, but is strongly implied to be grooming him to become her new caretaker.
She was played by Chloe Grace Moretz.
Her Evil Ranking[]
What Makes Her Close to Being Pure Evil?[]
- She routinely murders innocent humans for their blood without remorse. She also stands out compared to Eli from the original story due to not showing any conflict in doing so, as the scene where she explains that she only kills because she has to was cut, and even if it had been kept it’s possible she only said this to manipulate him.
- While she is a vampire and is dependent on blood to survive, she's clearly aware of her actions and is fully willing to kill innocents, so she does have moral agency and doesn't show much insecurity or guilt over her actions. While she's not sadistic and doesn't kill needlessly, this is likely just pragmatic as she doesn't want to draw attention to herself.
- She's shown to have met her current caretaker when he was a child himself, judging by photographs of her and him as a minor, and is implied to have manipulated him into serving her. It’s likely that she has also groomed other people into serving her in the past.
- While she does fight and kill a human serial killer in the prequel comic, this was mostly self-serving since the man was a threat to her and Thomas and was a witness to her crimes, so even if he was an innocent she would have had to silence him regardless.
- Despite Thomas's years of service, her affection for him starts to fade as he messes up, and she's heard yelling at him at one point and generally treats him coldly. The prequel comic also implies that she tried to groom another boy, Jon, into replacing Thomas, who was shown to be hurt that she would throw him away so readily.
- While she did initially seem to care for Jon and was upset when he was killed, she no longer seems to care about him by the events of the film itself as she never mentions him.
- She poses as a helpless child to lure a man close to her, then kills him and drains his blood.
- While she seems very affectionate and gentle toward Owen, her intentions toward him are ambiguous and she may simply see him as a replacement for Thomas. The fact that she has a history of grooming boys to serve her makes this far more likely than in the original story where Eli was confirmed to love Oskar. The director did say in an interview that she and Owen are in love at the end of the film, but this is a "word of god" statement not confirmed by the film itself.
- Even if she does care for Owen at present, she still prioritizes her own needs first and is shown to be repeating the cycle with Owen, putting him in a position where he'll be forced to kill for her for the rest of his life, and will likely dispose of him in turn when he's unable to continue serving her.
- She kills Thomas when he is caught and becomes a liability, though it's arguably a mercy kill as he'd disfigured his own face to try to protect her and was in agonizing pain. While he was willing to let her kill him and she looks at him sadly before doing it, she's responsible for his predicament in the first place by making him kill for her and she doesn't seem upset about his death afterwards, and doesn't even mention him for the rest of the film.
- She attacks a woman for her blood, leaving the woman seriously injured but alive. The woman starts to become a vampire, and is so horrified by this that she deliberately commits suicide via sunlight, killing a nurse in the process, so Abby is indirectly responsible for their deaths.
- She brutally murders a policeman who was investigating her murders, which traumatizes even Owen.
- She massacres Owen's bullies when they're on the verge of drowning Owen, and while she did save Owen's life, it was arguably disproportionate as three of them (Kenny and his two friends) were starting to have second thoughts and briefly urged Jimmy to stop when they realized he was actually going to drown Owen (though in her defense she may not have known that).
- She's a darker character than Eli in the original story in several ways:
- Eli is confirmed to truly love Oskar and turns him into a vampire in a sequel so they can be together, while Abby isn't confirmed to care for Owen beyond seeing him as a replacement for Thomas, and there's no indication that she would turn him.
- She has a history of grooming vulnerable boys to become her caretaker, while Eli does not.
- She's more abusive to Thomas than Eli was to her caretaker, as she yells at him in one scene and treats him coldly in favor of Owen.
What Prevents Her from Being Pure Evil?[]
- She's somewhat tragic as she was once a normal girl who was forcibly turned into a vampire, and seems to have some genuine desire to bond with others which is played for sympathy, even if it's a fairly minor prevention since she puts her own needs first and is fully willing to kill innocents and dispose of her caretakers if they become a liability.
- She shows minor protectiveness toward her caretakers - even if her feelings for them on the whole are ambiguous - as she looks sad before killing Thomas, warns Owen to get away from her when she needs to feed instead of killing him and saves him from being drowned by his bullies, and when Jon is beaten nearly to death by a jealous Thomas, she turns him into a vampire to try to save his life and seems upset when he's killed by a human serial killer.
- The prequel comic shows that she has some standards as she shows genuine disgust toward a human serial killer (who kills for pleasure rather than survival) as when he begs for his life by saying he's about to become a father, she tells him that by killing him she's doing his child a favor from having a bad parent.
Trivia[]
- She contrasts the original Swedish vampire in that:
- Abby is a cisgender female, whereas Eli (born Elias) is a castrated male who often presents as female although doesn't seem to mind either label; if any.
- Abby is demanding and rude to her caretaker, screaming at him in fury whilst he cowers, whilst Eli desperately pleads for him to try again to obtain blood.
- Abby's intentions and feelings are far more ambiguous to contrast the Swedish version, in which Eli obtained his caretaker as an adult.
- Abby has implicitly repeated the cycle with Owen and is unlikely to have turned him into a vampire, whereas Eli in the novels did just that.
- She and Abigail Lazar are the only Near Pure Evils to be young vampires.
- Unlike Abigail, Abby only hunts down humans for their blood to survive rather than taking sadistic pleasures.
- Interestingly, both girls' names are Abigail, with 'Abby' being a derivative of that.