Movie Review: Let the Right One In

Earlier tonight I went to see the Swedish movie Let the Right One In (“Låt den rätte komma in”). The Korean title is 렛 미 인 (“Let me in”).

The story is about Oscar, a 12 year old boy who is bullied at school and dreams of revenge. Oscar befriends a peculiar girl, Eli. As it turns out, Eli is a vampire.

Since we are currently living in the Postmodernism, for a current story to resonate with the audience of today it requires a postmodern flavour. What I liked about this movie was that it did not use the copout so prevalent for recent mainstream horror films in general, and vampire films in particular. What one most often see are shock techniques, over the top special effects, or characters that are just way out weird.

A more subtle (although not wholly original) method of postmodern characterization is to use the “outsider” or the “other” character. The “outsider” is easy to identify. Oscar is the bullied child in school, an outsider amongst his peers. Eli, as the monster-human, lives on the periphery of society. The “other”, in postmodern terms, is stereotypically the previously disadvantaged; i.e. non-white, non-man, non-adult, etc. The main characters in this movie aren’t adults but children.

What I especially appreciated about Let the Right One In is that the story remained true to the rules of the genre; for example, vampires need to be invited in before they can enter a house, or sunlight is lethal to vampires. Such genre rules are often broken in postmodern depictions, which I think is sometimes disrespectful to the genre. The author of the original novel, John Ajvide Lindqvist, who was also responsible for the screenplay, can be complimented for writing a good story without compromise.

Not opting for Hollywood’s special effects and shock techniques, the movie is able to engage the audience better. Although this is very much a horror movie with blood and gore, the director, Tomas Alfredson, does not make a sensational spectacle out of it. Neither does he sugar coat the horror. The horror moments are short but vivid, and strongly foils against the tender relationship of Oscar and Eli.

The cinematography was also exquisitely used. The director subtly changes the focus in the scenes and so guides the audience to shift their attention to different aspects of each shot. Often the audience is made aware of the commonplace – dirty fingernails, running noses, smudged faces. The audience is confronted with the paradox in Eli: she is both innocent and ferocious. We sometimes see her with her face dirty with blood after feeding and we realise that she is just an orphan, without a mother figure to clean her face and scrub her nails.

I am not a fan of horror movies, but I decided to go see this movie because I read many good reviews about it. And I was not disappointed. Even though it was in Sweden (the similarities between Sweden and Afrikaans only goes so far) and I therefore understood very little of the dialogue, I still enjoyed this film. Don’t be fooled, however, Let the Right One In is not intended for a young or easily squeamish audience.



Trivia

It is suggested that the title of the novel and movie comes from a song by Morrissey (a British pop-singer), entitled "Let the right one slip in". The last stanza of this song goes as follow: "And when at last it does / I'd say you were within your rights to bite / The right one and say, what kept you so long? / What kept you so long?" The allusing to biting in the second line may ad support to this suggestion. Of course, the title is chiefly a reference to the rule that vampires can only enter a home if invited.