CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Let The Right One In (2008)

The vampire coming-of-age movie Let The Right One In (2008)  commences and culminates with a mood befitting its wintry visuals: bleak and despairing.

At first blush, the snow seems beautiful blanket, coloring the Earth with pure white. But as the audience learns, the snow a just a surface.  Beneath it are layers of despair.

This is Oskar's (Kåre Hedebrant) universe. He's a twelve-year old boy living in a depressing apartment complex in blue collar Stockholm in the early 1980's. Oskar's skin complexion is as alabaster white as the never ending snow, and his life is as relentlessly bleak, his chilly personality as mysteriously opaque.

Oskar's mother doesn't really want him around, at least not when something good is playing on TV. And Oskar lives away from his father, who drinks too much and may prefer to be with his gay lover than with his only son.

Sensitive and highly intelligent, Oskar misses his Dad terribly, a fact the audiences realizes when the child fleetingly grasps his father's jacket and inhales his dad's scent as though it's some long lost treasure, a nostalgic remembrance of better times.

At school, Oskar's classroom lessons dwell on the dark side. A policeman lectures  in class about drugs, but the officer lingers lasciviously on murder, creating the impression it is tantalizing and romantic.

Meanwhile, pre-adolescent thugs make Oskar's life a perpetual misery, bullying him every day and making him "squeal like a pig." The bullying isn't typical playground behavior, it crosses the line into real violence and sadism. Oskar keeps a knife on hand for self-defense, but so far has not been able to "hit back," to retaliate.

Oskar copes with his lot the best he can. He "reads a lot" and maintains a thick scrapbook of true crime incidents. "A senseless massacre in Beirut," and "No Survivors in Arab Massacre" are the headlines that have captured his attention and found favor amongst his mementos.

A mysterious figure, Eli (Lina Leandersson) also captures his attention.

She is another 12-year old (or thereabouts...), and she appears in Oskar's snowy apartment courtyard one night, atop a jungle jim as though some delicate bird of prey. Although Eli informs Oskar that she is not actually a girl at all, and that they can't be friends, a close relationship ensues. Eli urges Oskar to fight back against his tormentors at school, and Oskar accepts Eli for who she, or he, is.

And who she is, or who she happens to be...is a vampire. Oskar processes and accepts this fact without question, without even blinking. In a world of divorce, loneliness, bullies, massacres and murder, why shouldn't there be vampires too?

Let the Right One In is a  horror movie by way of Ingmar Bergman film. It's a contemplative, deliberately-paced meditation on loneliness, adolescence, friendship and adulthood. In terms of approach, the film by director Tomas Alfredson de-romanticizes the vampire genre to an extreme degree, one not seen, perhaps, since George A. Romero's Martin in 1976.

The murders in the film are messy and chaotic, as ugly as the rest of Oskar's world is. Eli laps blood up hungrily off a dirty floor at one point, and her "guardian" (a possible pedophile) attempts one botched murder after another to procure her the nourishment she requires nightly. When he fails, he disfigures himself with acid so he can't be traced back to Eli.  And now and then, when we catch random glimpses of Eli, she appears either physically mutilated, or extremely old.

Ugliness and more ugliness.

Oskar and Eli are two lost souls, alienated from their society, who find each other and help each other get through the harshness of life the best they can. So when Eli states "I must be gone and live, or stay and die," Oskar sympathizes with her declaration. He knows that he can't remain in gloomy Stockholm because the oppressive snow, cold, and empty emotional life modeled by his unhappy parents will smother and kill him as surely as will the "dead" adult society which heartlessly stalks and hunts Eli, the unacceptable predator in its midst. The choice is simple, really. "Stay in the courtyard" as Oskar's mother demands, or take a chance and "let the right one in" to his life and try to find some measure of happiness with Eli.

An indictment of an adult world which fails children on every level, Let the Right One In depicts how two adolescents might build an intimate connection, even in the most difficult circumstances. They do so based on a mutual understanding of the things their lives lack: companionship, tenderness, security, and so forth. They are both outsiders, and form a bond based on their status as outcasts.

After Eli's guardian, Hakan (Per Ragnar) fails to provide for Eli, she says "You were supposed to help me. Do I really need to take care of myself?" The answer, at first, is yes, until Oskar comes along. Once he's in the picture, the children will be able to take care of each other. They even develop a secret language, learning Morse Code so they can converse through walls, and, helpfully, through crates/coffins.


The film doesn't exactly end happy. That wouldn't be true to the universe established by the filmmakers. Certainly, the bullies get their violent comeuppance in a splendidly executed sequence involving a swimming pool and a camera positioned underwater. And certainly, Oskar and Eli have grown a connection together, but really, what future do they have? What future can they possibly have together? Oskar will grow up...and Eli won't. Which will leave Oskar with the heartbreaking choice of either leaving Eli behind or becoming the next Hakan. Not a happy or romantic option, to be certain. The "realities" of adulthood, the ones which destroyed Oskar's parents, will seek him out too. In time.

In fact, one possible reading of the film is very predatory, at least on Eli's part.  Remember, Eli is incredibly old and experienced at this point in his/her life. With Hakan gone, the vampire needs a new assistant, a new procurer of victims, for easy survival. That's what the friendship with Oskar is all about. Eli sees in the boy someone who is so lonely that he will do anything.  The society of bullies, and of murders, has prepared him to do her bloody work for her. If one chooses to view the film this way, it is really about a vampire picking its next human caretaker and not about a friendship of outsiders.

Given this reading,, the Eli/Oskar friendship is merely a temporary respite against the snow, the warmth of a fire that burns bright, but will fade to cinders all too soon. Perhaps, suggests Let the Right One In, that's the best humans can ultimately hope for. A temporary shelter before the next blizzard buries us as again in alienation and isolation, ugliness and violence. Perhaps all relationships, even friendships like Oskar's and Eli's are actually transactional, based on the needs of the moment.  Perhaps, like Oskar's parents, he has just found the cage that he can live comfortably within, at least for a time.

So by all means, Let the Right One In to your life. But remember that the film, for its appearance as a story of friendship in a cruel world, may hide a darker, bleaker tale of despair.