There are troves of gory slashers, haunting horrors and psychological thrillers that take their imagery to the most hair-raising extreme. “Let the Right One In,” the 2008 Swedish horror film directed by Tomas Alfredson, is not that. The film features understated but highly unsettling imagery and themes, with sprinkles of raw human moments, against the backdrop of an austere, ice cold Stockholm suburb.
Oskar, a pale, bleach blond, twelve-year-old is friendless and bullied. He finally makes a friend out of his foil Eli, the gaunt, dark-haired, sunken-eyed new neighbor, who turns out to be a genderless adolescent vampire.
Unlike many contemporary monsters, Eli’s creepiness is seductive; it leaves room for the viewer’s imagination. Eli’s monster moments are shot from a wide-angle and are marginal to the viewer’s gaze. Viewers will question what they saw and anticipate confirmation, which the film so brilliantly deprives.
Eli’s monstrosity is smothered in enigma and littered with contradiction. Eli is vampire: both alive and dead; Eli is adolescent: both young and old; and Eli is castrated: neither male nor female. This categorical destruction summons a compulsive rejection – a reaction central to the horror monster’s prerogative.
To elicit fear and disgust from a horror audience without shocking violence or gore is quite a feat in the age of desensitization, and “Let The Right One In” does just that.
Also special to the film is its genuine moments of drama. In many horror flicks, communications between characters are stressed, high-octane and antithetical to the average daily experience. But “Let The Right One In’s” romantic, familial and emotional elements are understated along with its horror.
Eli’s murderous blood-sucking almost takes a back seat to Oskar and Eli’s subtly developed romance. Unlike “Twilight,” the “Vampire Diaries” or even certain iterations of “Dracula,” their relationship is not full of passion, sentimentality and recklessness. It’s simple, cute and lifelike.
“Let The Right One In” is for horror audiences looking to shake up their daily grind with something more sophisticated and for romantic drama fans who could use a bloodier love story.
Kelsey Percival is the editorial assistant for The Durango Herald and an avowed cinephile. Reach her at kpercival@durangoherald.com.
