by: Letitia
Posted on 12.13.09 in All Horror Films > Vampire
Release Date: 2008

Like that other recent vampire movie that will remain unnamed, Let the Right One In is, on the surface, is about teen vampires and budding love between outsiders. Unlike that other recent movie, Let the Right One In knows what to do with its monster. While Stephanie Myers’ vampires spend lots of time moping in Morrissey-style bouffants and bathed in sparkle, Tomas Alfredson’s vampire, the androgynous and decidedly unsparkling Eli, has the amount of reserve, fear, and cunning that you’d expect from a creature who has lived for hundreds of years and will live for hundreds more.

More importantly, though, Let the Right One In is about the brutality of children. The movie takes place in Sweden in the early 80’s in the middle of winter. When we first meet Oskar, a 12 year old boy with a bright, blond pageboy and a thin, girlish body, he is the victim of pretty much every bully in his school. He’s friendless and small for his age. His family life is equally bleak–though he isn’t abused or or neglected, his family seems disjointed, uninterested, and he wanders his colorless apartment alone and unnoticed.

When Eli moves into Oskar’s apartment building, we at first don’t see her–we see the work of an older man who seems to live with her and kills people so that she can feed. He carries jugs full of blood home after draining his victims, and it seems that this system works, at least for Eli. Her companion, though, is featureless, desperate to please her, and has no personal freedom. If you keep this grim figure in mind until the ending of the film, Let the Right One In becomes even more ambiguous than it already is.

Oskar meets Eli one night after leaving home to sit in the desolate playground in front of his apartment building, the ground snow-covered and bare. Something has to be said about the visuals in this movie–they are stunning, poetic, and strangely fitting for a vampire movie. The ever-present cold, snowy landscapes come out not in the daylight, but after dark, when the snow is lit in an eerie yellow from streetlights and the shadows are particularly stark. It is in this setting that Oskar and Eli meet. She is barefoot and coatless in the snow. Oskar asks if she is cold. She says no–she hasn’t felt cold in a long time. And so their strange friendship forms.

Let the Right One In doesn’t have big scares–its moments of horror are subtle and sparse throughout the movie, which makes them all the more surprising when they happen. Just when you begin to think that Eli is just like Oskar, another sad, lost kid, she (or he–Eli’s sexuality isn’t clear) does something that reveals her animal-like nature. Although the viewer feels relief that Oskar has found a friend and supporter, the movie leaves us with a sense of dread for Oskar. What kind of future can he have if bound to a creature that can’t die and seems to enslave its keepers? What will Oskar do when he begins to grow old and Eli remains a child? The movie doesn’t give any easy answers about surviving as an outsider, but it’s a beautiful meditation on isolation and loneliness.

• ★★★★★

  Acting:

• ★★★★★

  Blood:

• ★★★★★

  Violence:

• ★★★★★

  Partying:

• ★★★★★

  Language:

• ★★★★★

  Humor:

• ★★★★★

  Predictable:

• ★★★★★

  Girls:

• ★★★★★

  Gore:

• ★★★★★

  Sexuality:

• ★★★★★

  Torture:

• ★★★★★

  Overall: