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Reviewers like to tell you whether a movie is good or not, and whether they liked it or not.
But you want to know whether you'd like it...or not. Why should you care what I think, unless you know our tastes are the same? And you certainly don't want all the surprises in the film ruined for you.
So I'll try to help you decide whether to see this or not, without spoiling anything.
"Let the Right One In" is, above all, a serious movie. The concept, the plotting, the cinematography, the casting...everything serves a serious purpose--something like a meditation on what it means to have to take others' lives to keep your own...and what it means to know someone in this position. Of course none of us are, or know, vampires, but at the deepest level we have all taken advantage of others to help ourselves in some way at some time. Except my spouse, who's a saint, of course, just in case she reads this!
There's also the moral complexity that comes with the fact that many people who do great wrong to others often have a tender side. The family man who's a serial killer, the concentration camp commander who's a great father to his own children, the poet/dictator. Others are just monsters 24x7, but most have some redeeming traits. And such people are far more interesting than the Leatherfaces of the world. Even Saddam Hussein wrote poetry and doted on this children.
There is enough violence in "Let the Right One In" to justify an R rating, but none is gratuitous, and much is off-screen, in the manner of a good Hitchcock suspense movie, rather than some gorefest. The blood you see is there for good reasons, not just to shock you or titillate you.
It was done on a low budget by Hollywood standards. The sparse special effects are good enough to advance the plot but they aren't going to wow you by themselves. The actors are not Hollywood-beautiful, though I think the casting is perfect.
The main characters are children--more or less--but it's not a film for children (unless they're unusually deep children, if you know what I mean).
It's also not a film for those whose moviegoing expectations are entirely based on big-budget Hollywood movies.
I'm not criticizing such movies--I've seen many & loved many--but this ain't that.
In particular, many moviegoers want everything explained. This film doesn't do that. It explains nothing, actually. Not because the director wanted to keep you in the dark...but because a lot in life goes unexplained. Someone cuts you off on the freeway, nearly killing you, then vanishes into the night. You never know why he did that, and you'll never learn why. There were reasons, but you're not privy to them.
That's what this film delivers. Mostly you see things through the perspective of a 12 year old boy, and rarely know more than he knows. And the children in the film don't deliver long speeches explaining what they're up to, why they're the way they are, yada yada.
One reviewer hated this film because nothing is explained. He couldn't accept the fact that not all kids are highly self-aware extroverted, eloquent chatterboxes. "Where did you go?" "Out." "What did you do?" "Nothin'."
These kids are average kids in non-average circumstances. So are the adults and other kids around them.
You might also be disappointed if you're looking for a hero to a admire and a villain to boo. This film has neither.
I loved the TV series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel." Those have heroes, and their stories are the stories of the hero's journey. Their central characters are physically beautiful, their dialog is witty and knowledgable and often poetic. And the production values (after Buffy's first two seasons, which were shot in grainy 16mm) are great for late '90s TV. However, "Let the Right one in" is really, really different from these shows, and I'm sure it's equally different from Twilight.
Actually, it's a gritty, realistic vampire film, oxymoronic as that may sound. The closest equivalent to it that I can recall is the underrated Jude Law film "The wisdom of crocodiles." Or, more distantly, the Japanese TV anime show "Vampire Princess Miyu."
Finally, a word about the casting. The 12 year old boy is the whitest white boy I've ever seen this side of an albino. He perfectly embodies the quirky loner he portrays. The girl is also perfect, and while she's not Hollywood-pretty by any stretch, she has huge, hypnotic eyes--almost like the kids in those wretched Keane paintings you see at tourist art galleries, next to the clowns and seascapes. I couldn't think of any child actor today or earlier who could play this crucial part better. She's as well suited to this part as Peta Wilson was to playing La Femme Nikita in the eponymous TV series.
The working-class Swedes around them look the part perfectly as well.
The film isn't set in any beautiful urban setting, like you'd find in downtown Oslo or Gothenburg. It's set in a sea of utilitarian apartment blocks in a nondescript town, with the action taking place entirely in a Swedish winter. It's the beauty of bleak.
I loved this film myself, but I don't want you to get it or watch it unless what I've said here suits you. If you do buy it, please manage the expectations of those you see it with. The pace is generally slow by Hollywood terms--necessary to generate the needed atmospherics. However, the story is linear, and ultimately not obscure at all except for not explaining how the people you see got there in the first place. So it's not hard to follow at least.
It has now been several days since I saw this with my brother, who had the same feelings about it as I did. The film has stuck with me. You know how some films you see then forget the instant the screen goes dark? This isn't one of those. It's haunting. I didn't actually figure out the true nature of the two central characters' relationship until the next day, after the film had percolated through my brain for a while. I won't say what that is, since I promised no spoilers. But it will send chills up your spine.
And here's one moment to look for. You know how vampires can't enter your home unless you invite them in? (hence the title of this movie BTW) Watch what happens in this movie when that rule is tested. You'll remember this scene for the rest of your life, and I'm not talking about gore.
UPDATE December 21, 2011
This small-scale masterpiece has stuck with me in the two years since I first saw it. And now there's an American version of the novel as well, titled "Let Me In." I'm glad it has a different title, because I believe both films will be around for a long time, and they shouldn't be confused with each other.
Seeing "Hugo" last weekend reminded me of the American version, since both have Chloe Grace Moretz in them. Being a sociologist by training, I'm fascinated by both the critical and consumer responses to the two movies. More people have seen "Let Me In," as you'd expect, but "Let the Right One In" continues to have stout defenders.
In fact we now have Team Abby, Team Eli, and Team Can't We All Be Friends? I'm in the third one. I own both movies, I love both movies, and I think each is better than the other in certain things. Yet I've seen people write that one version or the other appalls them, or even disgusts them. Some have accused the director of one of the films of being a criminal for certain details in the film. And I'm appalled at so much ranting going on about two fine films that aren't in competition with each other.
After all, most serious filmgoers have seen more than one version of a bunch of Shakespeare's plays. I know I have.
Oh, and many go on and on about one film or the other being truer to the book. Why does that matter in the slightest? It presumes that the book is perfect, and that, moreover, screen adaptations can't bring anything to the party--their only job is to provide animated illustrations for the book. I find this absurd.
For example, "West Side Story" radically reconfigures "Romeo and Juliet." So does Zeferelli's (it's less obvious, but it does). Does that automatically invalidate each movie in favor of some BBC bare stage production delivers the exact text of the original? Of course not. And the novel "2001" is dry and obvious, while Kubrick's movie is majestic and inexplicit--and a great work of art, while the book is just a crutch for those who want everything spelled out for them in plodding prose.
The Rottentomatoes website aggregates critics' reviews of films, as well as reader responses. "Let the Right One In" garnered a 98% critical ranking, while "Let Me In" got a still very respectable 89%. Thinking about how "Let the Right One In" has stuck with me over these two years, I'm changing my own rating of the film from four to five stars.
The only place I fault "Let the Right One In" is, in fact, a place where it's truer to the book than the American version is. I can't discuss it without spoilers, so stop now if you haven't seen both movies (unless you've read the novel)
-- SPOILERS PAST THIS POINT -- SPOILERS PAST THIS POINT --
In the book Eli is a castrated boy originally named Elias. I haven't read the book myself, but I know this is true. "Let the Right One In" sticks to this, with a brief crotch shot of Eli (about as sexy as someone stepping on your foot) that makes the point. People on Team Eli claim that this is required to explain Eli's lack of interest in sex, and in Eli telling Oskar "I'm not a girl."
Fine, that's the novel. But if it were really going to be true for the movie, they'd have had to cast an adrogynous boy--not Lina Leandersson. She may not look like a young Ingrid Bergman, as Ms. Moretz does in "Let Me In," but she is distinctly female--in her looks, in her voice, in her motions. Prepubescent boys and girls resemble each other far more than pubescent ones do, but they still look different. Very few are exactly androgynous, and Ms. Leandersson ain't one of them--and it's an insult to her to claim that she looks like a boy. And no, it's not the girl's hairdo.
So neither movie is really true to the novel.
And in "Let Me In," when Chloe Moretz's character tells Owen "I'm not a girl," there's even less question as to her gender--even though she's a very strong girl who usually does her own stunts in every movie she's in. But then Owen asks her what she is, then, and she hesitates, then says "I'm nothing."
That's a profound moment in the movie, and I just wish the Swedish version had played it that way. Of course Abby isn't a girl. She's a vampire. And that means she is, indeed "nothing."
As for Abby/Eli's disinterest in sex...hello, they're 12. It doesn't matter how long they've been 12, their human biology is and will remain on the other side of puberty as long as they, um, un-live. Most 12 year old girls--even when they aren't vampires--are not interested in sex.
Honestly, when I watch "Let the Right One In" I view Eli as a girl because she's played by a girl. You want her a boy? Have a boy play the part. There are certainly androgynous boy actors out there. But don't tell me the Swedish version is true to the book and the American version isn't. Neither is true to the book in this regard, and personally I prefer it this way--it makes for a better film IMHO, and I put it to you that both directors think the sam as I do, given their casting choices.
Some reviews say Eli being a boy means Eli's relationship with Hakan is chaste. To which I say not on Hakan's part. He isn't 12. Whether they're having sex or not his desire is there, just as Owen's/Oskar's is. And it is whether or not Eli is a boy or a girl, for that matter. Eli/Abby needs a mortal human blood donor (so to speak)/protector who loves her. In our species that includes a lust component along with other things. If it didn't our species wouldn't be here. In this regard Eli's gender makes no difference--though it probably affects her choice of blood donor/day guardian.
It also means she can't turn her protector into a vampire. No day guard then, and no hold over him either. And it needs to be a male, because human males are generally stronger, and they need to be stronger in order to hunt for the vampire--who doesn't want to hunt, which again shows how deromanticized this film's vampire mythology is. And I think it needs to be a male who isn't an enthusiastic serial killer, because such people are rarely sufficiently devoted to the well-being of a 12 year old child, vampire or not. It needs to be someone somewhat normal, but alienated--like Oskar/Owen.
Note also that Eli's residual humanity shows in her (I think of her as a her) sparing that one kid in the pool scene. I wish the American version had done that. I also thought the climbing up the side of the hospital was visualized better in "Let the right one in," and what happens when Eli enters without permission, and in general I prefer the lighter touch "Let the Right One In" has with violence and CGI. I also prefer the fact that the woman Eli inadvertently turns chooses death when she realizes what she's becoming, while in the American version she just dies like an animal. That was another place where the American version should have imitated the Swedish one and didn't.
People argue back & forth about the way the American version cuts out subplots to focus on the protagonists. I'm fine with both choices, personally. Ditto the casting--two perfect pairs in my book. Moretz is going to take Scarlett Johansson's place when she comes of age--someone with true high voltage star power, sharp intelligence, rollicking sense of humor and wonder, a level head, and with action movie skills that means she'll probably wind up doing a blockbuster, then an art film, then a blockbuster, as so many intelligent actors do. I also hope to see Lina Leandersson in more films--you can't forget those haunted and haunting eyes, and the sureness she brings to a very challenging role for a 12 year old actor.
Lastly, some reviewers took the crotch shot and the implicit sexuality of the vampire-protector relationship (and, astonishingly, Oskar's frequent toplessness) as signs that the movie is borderline kiddie porn. I find this both appalling and immoral. "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." Publicly accusing someone of a heinous crime is itself a vicious crime unless you can prove it.
Back in 2004, several people in Mali were murdered by villagers because someone like these "reviewers" had spread the rumor that those people were vampires. In this century! And to call that utterly unsexual crotch shot pornographic is idiotic as well as libelous. But some people think about perversions all the time, and see it around every corner, behind every neighbor's eyes. It's a form of paranoia. That's how dozens of people were convicted of involvement in satanic chil abuse rings run out of daycare centers in the 1980. Many of those people were in prison for decades. But eventually every single one of them was found innocent and released. This is not to deny the problem. The turmoil surrounding so many Catholic priests in so many countries shows that sometimes there is fire where there's smoke, to be sure. But sometimes the beam is in the accuser's eye entirely, and that's the case here.
Bottom line: "Let the Right One In" is a great movie. I'd use it to teach classes in film school--especially to show that you don't need a gigantic special effects budget even when you're making a fantasy film, which this is really, despite its realism apart from the vampire part. I'd also use it to teach a class in situational ethics as well.
So if you haven't bought the DVD yet, please do so. And then get the American version too.
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Reviews with images
New Release is a winner !
Let The Right One In This new release has all the whistles and bells you could want. Swedish and English languages, but more importantly, four sets of subtitles to choose from. Not having seen it in theaters in 2008, I relied on what those who did told me about the release from Magnet (Magnolia Home Entertainment.) I was afraid that I'd get the version that the fans hated, but I got The Right One. I invited a couple of those "theatrical version fans" over to watch and they loved it. I just wish that the deleted scenes hadn't been deleted from the movie. The scene where Oskar takes his frustration out on Eli is heart-breaking and should have been left in. But someone needs to tell that girl to wipe her mouth after eating. That kiss was messy.DHBTW, in the last scene we'd all like to think that Eli taps, "I Love You" and Oskar taps, "Love You Back" but I'll bet that those who know Swedish and Morse Code will probably know that Eli taps, "ARE WE THERE YET" and Oskar taps, "Be Quiet And Go Back To Sleep."DH
Top reviews from other countries
dsx
Le meilleur film de vampire de tous les temps
Reviewed in France on April 20, 2024
J.Z
Una gran película con relativo bajo presupuesto
Reviewed in Mexico on November 21, 2019