Let the Right One In

Many people try to make vampire films, and the majority of them fail horribly.  I mean, seriously, sparkling vampires?  But that’s the Americans for you, always trying to make things look a little shinier.  A movie that definitely does not contain shiny vampires is Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In.  This is, in my opinion, one of the best vampire films that has ever been made, much of that due to the simplicity of the story mixed with the complexity of the relationship between the two main characters.

This movie is a dark depiction of a relationship between two children, one of them human and the other a vampire.  Both are isolated from the normal world due to their inability to properly interact.  The boy, Oskar, is victimized by 

stronger, meaner kids, while Eli, the girl vampire, is ruled by her hunger and doomed to play the part of a predator.  Both actors do amazing jobs portraying these tortured souls.

Let the Right One In is not so much a tale of horror as a story about the trials of growing up (though it does contain its fair share of blood).  Eli becomes Oskar’s savior, and he hers, but in different ways.  It is survival that links the pair and they come together to fill the weaknesses in each other even as they explore who they are.  The levels of symbolism and meaning in this film are 

deep, and I always find something new each time I rewatch it.

Though the movie was remade in America as Let Me In, it fell short in its attempt to rework the original with the same message.  Anyone with an interest in vampire films, or who can sympathize with the trials of a dysfunctional childhood, will most likely enjoy Let the Right On In.