Let the Right One In
As I wrote in my review of Twilight, movies about vampires are almost always about something else. In Let the Right One In, a Swedish film directed by Tomas Alfredson, we get a new angle--the vampire representing the despair of the adolescent outcast.The film is about Oskar, a twelve-year-old boy who is constantly bullied in school. Outwardly he accepts his torment, but inside violence is festering, as if he were a prospective member of a Trenchcoat Mafia (the first words we hear him say are "Squeal like a pig!") He has new neighbors: a middle-age man who is first seen killing someone in the woods and stringing him up to drain his blood, and what appears to be his daughter, Eli, who is Oskar's age but doesn't go to school (nor is she ever seen in the daylight).
The two kids become friends. Eli's father is not very good at gathering blood for her, so she's forced to get it herself, with gruesome results. She and Oskar look out for each other, but when Oskar suggests they become blood-siblings he figures things out.
Eli becomes for Oskar a manifestation of his rage, and the films ends in a way that satisfies blood-lust, but I found it to be a bit of a cop-out (Alfredson, on the supplemental material, refers to it as a happy ending, perhaps the first time this has been the label for a film that ends in the mass slaughter of children). To me it seems that Oskar will fulfill the role that Eli's father did at the beginning of the film (and given Eli's uncertain age, maybe he wasn't her father).
The film also makes use of a couple of vampire "rules" (not being able to be exposed to sunlight, and having to be invited it into a home) but not necessarily others (like not being seen in mirrors). It seems to me that these rules don't belong in a film like this, which isn't really a horror film but instead a psychological drama about the travails of childhood.
I should add that the performances by the children, Kåre Hedebrant as Oskar, and Lina Leandersson as Eli, are quite good, and more importantly, free of preciousness.
I liked it a whole lot more than you did, apparently, and found the ending to be exactly the opposite of a cop-out. On the other hand, I've read the book, so I know what choices the director made in keeping the film much more allusive to aspects that were spelled out quite plainly in the novel. Such as the fact that Håkan is obsessively in love with Eli. The ending and how Alfredson treats the character of Håkan is the main difference between them story-wise.
ReplyDeleteYou compare a film like this to dreck like Twilight, most horror films, even most films about teenagers and you can't help but to appreciate that at least some people truly try to make something of value and meaning.
It's because I found this film so much better than dreck like Twilight that I found the ending disappointing. I'm referring to the scene in the swimming pool. When I watched it, I had an interesting experience. Of course I wanted Oskar to be rescued, but I also dreaded it, because it was so predictable, like a B western where the cavalry saves the day. I did like the denouement on the train, though. It was satisfactorily ambiguous.
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