Let The Right One In (Swe)

I just finished watching Let the Right One In... Wicked... Awesome... Film!

This Swedish film with English subtitles based on the 2004 vampire novel by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist called, Let Me In (from the Morrissey song, Let the Right One Slip In) is an example of simplicity at its most ravishing. It is austere. It is starkly beautiful. It is poignantly still. It is an incredible representation, physically, of how powerful the antithesis of pathetic fallacy can be... the quietude of the frozen landscape... the vast emptiness of infinite vistas of snow... dotted constellations of light in the form of humans, huddled together to stave off the outer emptiness and keep it from insinuating itself into their veins so thoroughly that they stop feeling the need to move - their subtle fight to keep from becoming as still as their surroundings.... And all of it a reflection of the lonely, bruised inner life of the main character, Oskar, a 12 year old victim of school bullies, whose aloneness, and acceptance of the inevitability of his fate is palpable. In this frozen desert, he meets Eli, a mysterious 12 year old who refuses to admit to being a girl, and as the story goes on, we see why. Oskar falls in love with her nonetheless, and as he comes to accept Eli and everything 'she' is, Oskar's bruised and dark inner landscape becomes illuminated, just as his outer life becomes darker, but also more rich for the experiences they share. Similarly, Eli finds redemption in Oskar's acceptance, and together, they keep the fear and loneliness of their respective existences at bay, and find a way to help each other survive.

Let the Right One In does not bother with the complicated rules required by the various vampire 'franchises'. Nor does it bother with the standard bag of tricks that every horror film seems to find the need to dig into for material. It dispenses with the monster under the bed or the thing everyone but the characters know is hiding in the basement. Nothing need jump out at us. This isn't about screaming, or Halloween jolts, or even gore requiring more blood than the entire casts and crew can contain in their bodies. This is a quiet film, and the pace and dialogue are almost dreamy. There are no 'outs'. The rules are simple and traditional. Must live on blood. Must stay out of sunlight. And must be invited in. Eli, in the process of letting Oskar in, shows him the consequences for her of breaking this eldrich and inviolable rule of vampirism, and in putting her very existence in his hands, cements a bond between the two that will lead them to save each other. Even when it seems that one cannot help but break a promise to always be there to help... to save the other, they find a way to keep faith with each other... to always prove to the other that they've let the right one in.

This is not a horror film. It is The Secret Garden, but set in a vast frozen wasteland and requiring no adults, because adults are not the players in this fairy tale... not the drivers of this story... It is an adult love story about children who, left to their own devices must find their own way in the world. It is a fairy tale in which the participants know their parents are not waiting for them at the other end of the journey through the dark and scary forest, and can offer no succor because they are not and can never be part of the world these children - both the forlorn victims and the villainous monsters - inhabit, and so it does not require the complicated motivations or rationalizations of adults. These children understand that this is just the way their world is, and their simple acceptance of reality combined with the unsullied lens through which they perceive their world, allows the filmmakers to strip away all the bows and bunting, all the unnecessary bowing to convention that so often brings into being our belief in the emperor's new clothes, and as such, provides them with the opportunity to create a film whose intentions and emotions are naked, raw and honest.

This is just a simple lovely film about two people who find the right one, and let them in, and in doing so, save themselves and each other. And it is so very much more.

Based on the film, the book Let Me In, which is available in English, is a must read.

The story line is a bit slow but the story itself is so sweet and almost normal with the hint of horror that comes with a vampire movie. The young girl, Eli, is a vampire and you find that out pretty much at the beginning. You can't help but love the young yet blood thirsty girl. She may look young but she has that wisdom that comes with immortality.
Eli befriends a young boy (12 years old) who is lonely and horribly bullied. The boy has no friend and he is the child of a divorced couple who almost couldn't care less about him.
Eli teaches Oskar to be strong and defend himself while Oskar teaches Eli puzzles and other things.
Their friendship blossoms and in the midst of this beautifully tender friendship, there are brutal murders.
What i loved most about the film is that its artsy. It is not simply about a boy meets vampire girl. The cinematographer wanted to show Sweeden's beauty, which he does and the angles of filming was beautiful. What added to the eeriness of the film was its lack of music. More often than not, the film was silent, without the disruption of a score that usually is a telltale of what's going to happen. I loved that silence.
I highly recommend the film.