[rec/review] Let the Right One In
Låt Den Rätta Komma In
or Let the Right One In
or Ystävät Hämärän Jälkeen (a horrible Finnish name D:)
Director: Tomas Alfredson
Screenplay & Novel: John Ajvide Lindqvist
Language: Swedish, available with subtitles
Release Date: 2008
Length: 115 min.
Rating: R/K-15
A 12-year-old Oskar is bullied at school and spends his evenings imagining how he'll take bloody revenge on his tormentors. In a cold winter night he meets Eli who's just moved next door. Eli tells him that they can't be friends but as it usually is with movies, that lasts about five seconds.
This despite the fact that when Eli appeared, people started dying gruesomely. A boy was found in a forest, drained of blood, and Eli's "father" Håkan goes out at nights. Little by little Oskar figures out the truth behind Eli and Håkan, and the truth isn't pretty.
First off, this isn't a Hollywood movie. This means that hideous transformations, soundtracks full of dramatic music and oh-so-perfect-and-fake-looking settings are absent. The characters aren't drop-dead gorgeous and while the local drunks are also important characters, the movie never dwells in their OMGSOHORRIBLE lives. ...No offense to Hollywood, but I bet that would've happened had this been made there. Prove me wrong, remake!
Let the Right On In is spooky and dark and feels very real. The children aren't nice and kind. The bullies are horrible and a protagonist or not, Oskar isn't all sunshine and rainbows either. He has a scrapbook full of articles about brutal murders and he carries a knife with him, hoping to find the courage to use it. Eventually Eli gives him enough confidence to stand up and face the bullies, but that one doesn't end too well either.
The movie uses beautiful imagery to portray Oskar's loneliness (in fact, very little is said aloud at all. Everything else speaks instead of the people.) and how he reaches out to Eli. He even learns the Morse code to communicate with Eli through the wall between their apartments.
Eli herself is a fascinating character. She's twelve, but she's been twelve for over 200 years and she's learned to use her size and apparent age for her advantage when she's forced to go out and hunt.
Mind, calling Eli a girl is wrong and in the novel it changes when Oskar finds out that a long time ago, Eli was a boy (the person playing Eli is a girl). I suppose that you could call Let the Right On In a LGBTQ movie because of that. Oskar doesn't care that Eli isn't a girl: it doesn't change their relationship at all. I think it's also kind of wrong to call Eli a boy since it really doesn't matter. Eli isn't a human and that's more important than what's between his legs (which is... nothing).
He's a hunter, a beast from our nightmares. I really liked how animal imagery was used to give Eli the otherness: eyes that flash in the dark, a predatory growl and the remorseless need to kill and eat to survive. Eli doesn't sparkle or choose to eat animals.
In conclusion: If you want to watch a serious vampire movie, you should choose this. I'm sure you can suffer through the subtitles even if you're not used to them.
And a few words about the novel. I read it but I wouldn't recommend it.
This is one of the rare instances where I prefer the movie to the book. The only thing I would've liked to see in the movie was Eli's backstory but I definitely understand why it wasn't included. The novel doesn't make violence terrible but/and understandable (from a vampire's point of view anyway). It makes it unpleasant and needless, more gore than horror. It also includes prostitution, pedophilia, torture, animal abuse and like I said, pointless delving into violence in general.
The novel did have a bit more ambiguous view of Eli and Oskar and their relationship, and I did like it a lot. You get the nagging feeling that maybe Eli had other motives to get close to Oskar than simple friendship...