Let The Right One In
Posted on May 23rd, 2009
Let The Right One In
[Rating: 7/10]
Genre: Paranormal, Drama
Oskar is a meek twelve-year-old boy who often gets bullied. Secretly he’s into macabre and violent things. One day a middle-aged man and a young girl move into the apartment next door around the same time a string of bloody murders happen in the neighbourhood, and as Oskar befriends the girl, he comes to know out the dark secret she habours.
First-off, let me say that this film is not for everyone. It is about vampires but it is not your typical vampire story, and secondly some of the violent scenes involve kids and may be disturbing to some people.
This is the first swedish film I’ve watched to my knowledge, and it was actually pretty good. The setting of the show is very bleak and dark, but it’s given since it’s a perpectually wintry sort of place and it sets the right mood for the show. It is not action-packed but very subtle in the way information is revealed. For example I have a suspicion that Hakan used to be in Oskar’s shoes a long-time ago, except that time has caught up with him and he has aged whereas Eli remained a child. Vampires are not portrayed here as an evil race but there is no sweet-coating the fact that they have to drink human blood to survive or they’ll start to get druggie-like withdrawal symptoms. Also I think that this is the first time I’ve seen a movie deal with the question – what happens if a vampire sets foot into a place they’ve not been invited into? As a character I found Oskar rather disturbing on many levels, even compared to Eli, Hakan and the bullies. I did not understand his ‘die you pig’ scene or macabre obsession, although it may be that he’s just supressing his anger towards the bullies. He took the fact that Eli was a vampire very nonchalantly, too nonchalantly I think, although it could be due to his strange quirks and the fact that children are probably more willing to believe in fantastical creatures rather than adults, who’d think it was a lie or just freak out (going in vein of other types of similar stories). And ooh, the scene where Eli savagely attacks the bullies at the end was very brutal even though they didn’t show what happened – I guess I got squicked since they’re still kids. I expected her to attack Jimmy at least, but the others? Hm, I’d say this show plays on the what is right and wrong issue quite a bit.
That said, the cast was pretty outstanding, especially the two main actors. Eli was probably my favourite character of the lot. I could feel her convinctions clashing as she ended up reluctantly letting Oskar befriend her and the scenes with the Rubik’s Cube were cute, so were the scenes in their budding relationship that provided a nice balance with the gloominess and murders. Honestly I thought this would be more of a horror show because of the promotional material (the posters mostly) and generally horror where kids are involved seem to be much more sinister so I avoid them. But I’m glad that I actually caught it because it was more of a normal drama with a mystery element rather than horror. Also it was quite unique to what I have seen so far. I don’t watch a ton of arthouse or european films although this hasn’t really converted me yet, but it was definitely something different.
Filed under: ** movie, drama, paranormal