"Let Me In" writer-director Matt Reeves hopes to bring a relevant and poignant spin to his remake of the critically acclaimed Swedish vampire film "Let the Right One In."

A joint production between Overture Films and Hammer Films, "Let Me In" is based on the book "Lat den Ratte Komma In" by John Ajvide Lindqvist.

Reeves' film relocates the story from Sweden to a small New Mexico town. But like the original story, the remake centers on an alienated 12-year-old boy in the '80s who befriends a mysterious young girl only to discover she's a vampire. Despite this unnerving revelation, his friendship with her remains stronger than his fear, which sends him on an unconventional path to adulthood.

"I was so taken with the way that Lindqvist had taken a vampire story and found a way to make it about the pain of adolescence," Reeves said recently during a panel discussion at Comic-Con International. "Lindqvist's story is such a complex and beautiful story. And the relationships are so critical to it. : And yet it falls on two 12-year-old kids to play.

"I felt like that if I could take this story, and really honor Lindqvist's story, but find a way to put it into an American landscape, to tell that story in a way that would relate to how I felt about growing up : that would be a really interesting thing to try and do."

Reeves was also pulled in by Lindqvist's concept of a "12-year-old boy who is bullied so terribly that he has fantasies of murder and revenge, and falls in love with a very, very violent : but also heartbreakingly tender vampire. How that person would deal with living in a world where his feelings were not acceptable, and not ok."

With Lindqvist's book serving as a bible, Reeves also chose to include portions of it in the remake that were not used in the Swedish film.

"It's sort of this weird amalgamation of stuff that's very much from the structure of the original story," he explained. "Stuff from the book and stuff from my own personal interpretation of that period of my life, and what the United States was like at that time."

And like the book and the original film, Reeves chose to paint a gloomy vision of vampire life.

"The difficultly of this story is it's about how hard it is to be a vampire really," Reeves said. "It's about not being happy about it. It's not romantic at all."

"Let Me In" hits theaters Oct. 1.

The film stars Chloe Moretz ("Kick-Ass"), Kody Smit McPhee ("The Road"), Cara Buono, Sasha Barrese, Elias Koteas and Richard Jenkins.

Click here to watch the trailer for 'Let Me In'