The beauty of Let the Right One In resides in the way the horror remains grounded in a tragic kind of love.
Wesley Morris, Boston Globe
I do not like horror films. I was able to sit through a handful of them my whole life, and only in front of the TV screen (that’s if we don’t count Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which I don’t think really falls into the “horror” category). It’s cowardice, yes, and an utter distaste for gore and gruesomeness.
I’m not much for vampire movies, either. But when a friend asked me to check out this movie, in an effort to understand why it is deemed better than Twilight, I agreed. I wasn’t courageous enough to voice out that I’m tempted to think that any other movie can be better than Twilight; I resolved to watch the film in broad daylight and was surprised to realize that it is worthy of all the praises. It has good scares, of course; it is creepy; and it is beautifully constructed. It’s one of those fims that are more about the storytelling than about the story – the kind that critics love to rave about. The kind that is not commercial and mainstream.
Let the Right One In is a Swedish film that centers on Oskar, a perennially bullied teenager, and Eli, his new neighbor who for all appearances seem to be just another laconic 12-year-old girl. As the two form a bond, Eli’s secret begins to unravel, and let’s just say that “she” is more than that – she’s been 12 for a long time, just without any need for the best wrinkle creams to hide the fact.
I was taken by the chilliness of the film, and not just because it is more often than not fimed in a snowy landscape; it doesn’t have too many movements nor sounds, like what you’ll expect from the genre, but it is, nevertheless disturbing and, ultimately, better than that other film I mentioned in terms of filmmaking strengths. To be fair, though, I don’t think the two movies should be compared, despite the fact that both are love stories about a couple, half of which is a vampire and the other half is human. The similarity ends there.