Let The Right One In

I went to see Let The Right One In last Tuesday. I probably should have written this review when the film was fresher in my mind, but it was an interesting movie so I'll do my best with week-old impressions.

SPOILER ALERT











Some disclaimers:

1. It got 98% on rottentomatos.com, 192nd best movie of all time according to imdb.com, and two friends of mine highly recommended it. So, my expectations might have been unreasonably high.
2. The film is in Swedish with English subtitles. I found some of the dialog and acting to be weak, but some of that might be in the translation.
3. I must confess to an anti-vampire bias. Yeah, they're kind of cool - they get to stay up all night and live forever, they kill people but really they're just misunderstood. But how many friggin' movies do we need about them? I know this one's edgy and foreign and arthouse, but still ... again with the vampires?
   

Synopsis: Oskar, a 12-year-old social outcast and subject of school yard bullying, befriends his new neighbor Eli whom he sees only in their apartment's courtyard at night. She also is 12 years old, "more or less" - it turns out that's her age only insofar as she was 12 when she became a vampire. The movie focuses on the friendship between these 2 misfits.

When Eli first moves in she is in the care of an adult named Håkan. He's basically her Renfield, a loyal servant who protects her during the day and gathers fresh blood for her at night. Unfortunately he's incompetent. At first I thought this was lazy storytelling, since he couldn't have been providing for her very long acting this way. He etherizes people then hangs them upside-down to drain their blood, but fails to do so in secluded locales. Later it becomes clear he no longer has the stomach for his role in her life, so I chalked up his behavior more to weariness than incompetence.

Problem is, the other adults in the film behave as stupidly as he does. We see news reports of the killings, and on at least 2 occasions witnesses identify a young black-haired girl. But law enforcement is almost non-existent, and not until very late in the film does anyone connect her with the creepy new guy and his waifish daughter who just moved in next door. And at that point a guy marches into her apartment (which is inexplicably unlocked) toting only a pocket knife.

Eli also behaves carelessly when she takes to feeding herself. If she's really a 20-30 year old (the film is purposefully vague on this point - she could be centuries old for all we know), she'd have to be dense not to have learned better. I got the impression, though, that no matter how old she is, she's still stuck at 12. Emotionally, physically, and psychologically.

In a needless subplot, Eli bites but does not finish the kill on a woman. This, of course, turns the poor woman (subtly named "Virginia") into a vampire. We see her get attacked by a throng of cats then commit suicide by exposing herself to sunlight and bursting into flames. Both scenes had some interesting special effects, but were laughably over the top and out of sync with the rest of the film. They added nothing to the story. Perhaps the filmmakers wanted to expand on the trying life of a vampire, but isn't one of the advantages of making a vampire flick that you don't have to explain all the rules?

One strength of the film was the creepy-cool special effects used on Eli. When we first meet her she jumps of the top of a jungle gym onto the ground, and I'm not sure but I think some film trickery makes her almost imperceptibly land softer than would be natural, as if she floats to the ground. Her eyes grow slightly larger when she's in vampire mode, her skin tone changes based on how well-fed she is - she is sometimes a sweet little girl and sometimes a grotesque predator. All very well done visually.

The heart of the film is the friendship arc between Eli and Oskar. They bond in part because neither has any other friends. She agrees to be his girlfriend in a scene that is sweet because neither of them really know what it means, and ironic because she's not a girl (down to the anatomical level, the film later makes graphically clear). When Oskar learns her true nature, he is at first cruel and petty, but softens when confronted with some of the suffering she must endure.

She convinces him not to judge her for her murderous ways. She kills to feed herself, while he constantly fantasizes about killing for revenge. This argument works on Oskar, but not on me. She could feed without killing (she has plenty of money she could pay folks for blood transfusions). At the very least she could drain more blood out of each victim so she doesn't have to kill so often. And she makes absolutely no attempt to choose her victims discriminantly - she could act as a vigilante if she wanted to make her kills win-win. Either she's lying to him and her behavior is cruel and selfish, or she's just too immature to see an alternative. I'd lean toward the latter.

In the film's climax, Eli saves Oskar's life from the bullies, killing 4 more victims in the process. It's clear she can stay safely in this town no longer. The film closes with Oskar taking Eli (safely encased in her daytime crate) on a train to start over somewhere else.

I basically saw the film as the completion of Eli's parasitic cycle. Not necessarily in a malicious way (although one could view it that way), but more likely as a consequence of her nature to which she willingly submits. There's a seen between Eli and Håkan early in the film where she gently caresses his cheek. This, combined with his portrayal as a man who's had the life sucked out of him, and Eli's inability to say how long she's been a vampire, had me interpreting their relationship as having started many years ago when Håkan was young, perhaps Oskar's age. Oskar and Eli's relationship is sweet when they're 12 (at least, as sweet as a pair of pre-adolescent serial killers can be), but he'll age and she won't. Someday soon he's going to have a sex drive that she can not satisfy. She's saved his life, so his guilt will never let him leave her. Eventually he'll be old enough to be her father and the whole relationship will just be awkward.

Another way of looking at it is that Oskar, as an outcast kid filled with impotent rage, has found the only lifestyle with which he can safely fulfill his homicidal fantasies. Maybe bloodlust and vampire companionship is all he'll ever need to make him happy, and that makes them a perfect match. Ah, kismet!

Either way, it's a dark tale even for a vampire flick. It was good, excellent in parts. It could have been much better with smarter writing for the adult characters. And they should have snipped the Virginia subplot. But I had fun interpreting the ending in different ways.

I recommend it, but it's over hyped. No way this is one of the best 200 films ever made.