Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In)

Two 12-year-olds meet one evening in the courtyard outside the apartment block where they live. He is Oskar, a sad and lonely little boy who is constantly bullied at school and has a scrapbook full of stories about murders that he’s cut from the newspaper. She is Eli, the new girl next door. She advises him on how to deal with the bullies and tells him that if standing up to them doesn’t work, she'll help him herself.



They are two misfits drawn to each other and you perhaps expect a typical ‘coming of age’ movie as Oskar's fascination with her, develops into a full blown crush but all is not what it seems with Eli. We are in Stockholm in the middle of winter but Eli is not wearing a coat or shoes even though there’s snow on the ground. She also smells real bad and all the windows to her flat have been covered with cardboard to block out the light. Her ‘Dad’ goes out at night stringing people up by their feet, slitting their throats and draining their blood into a bottle that he takes home for Eli. She may be 12 but she tells Oskar she’s been 12 for a very long time. Yep it’s the same old story, boy meet vampire and falls in love.

So it’s a horror movie but it isn’t. It’s like no other vampire movie that I’ve seen before. It is at times quite horrific but the film doesn’t rely upon cheap scenes of gore and unlike most horror movies, it has a plot. The main element of which is the close friendship between Oscar and Eli.

Her ‘Dad’ is not very good at the blood gathering lark and after one particular botched attempt, knowing that he is about to be found out, he pours acid on his face so that he can't be identified. When he is taken to the hospital, Eli climbs up to his room where she feasts on him before he falls to his death through the open window.

Her ‘gatherer’ gone, Eli goes to Oskar’s apartment and knocks on his window, asking to be let him. A vampire can only enter a home when they are invited in. It is good to see that throughout the film, the ‘vampire rules’ are upheld.



They spend that night together and Oskar asks her whether she'd like to go steady with him. Even though Eli tells him that she’s ‘not a girl’, he isn’t deterred, boys never are, so they go steady anyway. Oskar cuts his own palm to seal their new found status in blood but she falls to the floor and begins to drink up the blood. Oskar, smart boy that he is, suddenly sees her for what she is but still they go steady.

When Eli attacks a woman but the woman is rescued, all it does is condemn her to become a vampire too. She is viciously attacked by her friend’s cats and develops an aversion to light. She knows something is badly wrong and doesn't want to live. When her doctor open the blinds to her room she impressively combusts. A great moment.



Almost as good is the closing swimming pool scene where the elder brother of the bully, who Oskar finally fought back against, intends to dish out some retribution but he gets much more than he bargained for as Eli holds good her offer to come to Oskar’s aid. A loving gesture... perhaps, if such brutality be seen as an act of love.

At the end, as our two young ‘lovers’ elope together, we are left to ponder the future. Oskar may have escaped the bullies but what has he traded this for? Is he simply stepping into the shoes of her ‘Dad’? Is this how she works? Seduce a young boy to help her survive until he has grown old and outlived his usefulness, at which point she can replace him with a younger model... hmmm sounds familiar, but I digress. All the way thorough the film is played as a romance but the end is, when you think about it, simply chilling.

‘Let the Right One In’ is a great film that leaves you both repulsed and fascinated at the same time and asks, among other things, whether good and evil can coexist in the same person.

Hollywood, of course, has seen the money making potential here and will remake this film next year, without the subtitles. Presumably also with a lower certificate to make even more money and presumably with a lot of the darkness and especially the sexual undertones removed, so as not to offend anyone. Of course they’ll also have to add a happy ending and I for one, hate happy endings. Avoid like the plague, see this instead.