Let the Right One In

Here I go again, reviewing a movie that partakes of a genre I don’t really get—the horror film. But with a difference—it’s Swedish! Let the Right One In is like Ingmar Bergman meets Halloween 23. Though it’s true that Bergman had some pretty horrifying scenes, they were psychological; here there’s blood on the screen.

The story centers on a 12-year-old boy living with his single mom. He seems to be a social outcast, beleaguered by bullies. He keeps a knife with him and fantasizes killing his tormentors. It is during one of his acting out fantasies that he meets Eli, who materializes in the courtyard of the apartment complex. We know something’s fishy about her right away because it’s the dead of winter and she has no coat on. She’s 12 as well but, as she puts it, she’s been twelve for a long time. The two, who seem desperately alone, form a strange friendship, that is perhaps best characterized by their learning Morse code and tapping messages to each other through the shared wall of their apartments. Both seem emotionally deadened, perhaps with good cause, but it does tend to distance us from the film. An analogous effect is created by the director’s filming scenes in which Eli attacks people from a considerable distance. It is also supported by moments of black humor that leave the audience uncomfortable with their laughter.

The problem with the emotional deadness and distance is that, if the film aspires to rise above the horror genre, it must do so as a coming-of-age film. But for that to work, we have to be engaged with the adolescents involved. It’s hard to know how to relate to a boy who, when worked over by bullies, simply picks himself up, straightens his clothes and goes sullenly on. And Eli’s emotional life is probably difficult, but she is, after all, a vampire and pretty opaque. We also don’t know how innocent she really is. How many times, in her long twelve-year-old life, has she had relationships like the one with Oskar? Early in the film she is living with an older man who kills victims to feed their blood to Eli. He sacrifices himself to protect her in a pretty spectacular manner (which I won’t reveal). Is this a future Oskar may face by remaining with the unaging Eli?

Toward the film’s end Eli’s nocturnal habits are catching up with her and she tells Oskar she has to leave. We see her depart in the upscale car of a mysterious benefactor who apparently keeps vampires from living on the streets. This might be the end of a coming-of-age film—boy loses the first love of his life and then goes on. But in the film’s final sequence Eli reappears at just the right moment as an avenging angel and protector of Oskar. That scene’s violence (though subtly represented) and its theme of revenge, takes us back to the horror genre. It's the ending of Carrie but done tastefully--sort of. But the overall effect seems a bit conflicted.

I will confess that I have seen Twilight (not reviewed here!), a truly mindless take on the theme of human/vampire love. Let the Right One In isn’t that by a long shot, but it isn’t quite free of its genre origins. So maybe it's that rarity, an art-house horror film.

The title, by the way, is from a Morrissey song, of whom the screenwriter and novelist is a big fan: “Let the right one in/ I’d say you were within your rights to bite/The right one and say, ‘What kept you so long?’ ”

Subtitle caution: Persons speaking in foreign tongues.