“I'm just twelve, but I've been
twelve for a long time.” This is how the mysterious new neighbor
Eli responds to Oskar's question as to her age. But it takes them a
while to get around to that question. First we meet the bookish
Oskar, who is bullied at school and spends his evenings contemplating
revenge with his hunting knife. Eli first finds Oskar practicing
stabbing his knife into a tree. She initially tells him, “We can't
be friends,” but both are lonely. Oskar seems to have a fraught
relationship with his mom, and he rarely gets to visit his dad. Eli
seems to have only Hakan, a grown man of uncertain motivations, who
murders to bring home blood for her, because, as we gradually learn,
Eli is a vampire.
This 2008 Swedish film is slow-paced
and downright weird, but fascinating. Like Oskar, we are dying to
find out what the deal is with Eli. Who and what is she? How does
she live, and why is she shacked up in Oskar's housing project? “Let
the Right One In” is touted as horror, and the older brother of one
of the bullies IS a pretty scary figure, but the film isn't really
scary in the classical sense. Director Tomas Alfredson just
maintains a tone of suspense and dread throughout. Despite the
movie's slow pace, I was perpetually on the edge of my seat.
There are aspects of the movie that I
still don't understand, although one of them was cleared up by doing
some reading on the internet. Rather than spoiling the mysteries, I
will suggest you do the same after watching it, and I DO recommend
the movie. It will be too slow for some, and of course it has
subtitles, but it's a beautiful love story cloaked in horror.
3 stars out of 5
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