31 Days, 31 Horror Reviews Day 18: Let the Right One In

2008.

Now it is time to visit our fifth country on our journey through these Spooky Times, the Kingdom of Sweden. This is a nation known for its cultural exports such as ABBA, depressing crime novels, and today’s movie, Let the Right One In, directed by Tomas Alfredson. This is also our third vampire movie so far. 2008 was the year of two great vampire romances. As much as I would love to tell you all about Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, we are instead looking at something much darker and much more transgressive.

Let the Right One In has most of the traditional vampire rules. They drink blood, they burn in sunlight, and they cannot come inside without an invitation, thus the title. The strangest change to the mythology is that now cats compulsively attack vampires, a la Stephen King’s wonderfully ludicrous movie Sleepwalkers. However, the physics are not what Let the Right One In is deconstructing. It is playing instead with the age of the vampire. Rather than a dapper count or teenager, the vampire is a tiny child. Let The Right One In is a prepubescent romance between a troubled boy and an undead… well, that’s complicated.

Our hero is Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant), a little blonde boy tormented by bullies and perversely fascinated by murder. The vampire is the feminine-presenting Eli (Lina Leandersson, but dubbed over by Elif Ceylan), who has just moved in the apartment next door. Eli’s familiar is an older man, Håkan (Per Ragnar) who goes out at night to murder strangers. He kills in a cold, all-business manner, collecting their blood in a plastic jug for Eli’s consumption. Unfortunately for Håkan, he keeps breaking stealth on every mission, so he’s never successful. Eventually he gets caught and has to pour acid on his face to keep Eli’s secret. That leaves Eli in search of a new protector, and Oskar might be the next man up.

The movie never says one way or another whether Eli and Oskar are truly in love or whether he is to become just the latest in a long line of “Renfields” that Eli has collected over the centuries. Could be that both are true. Eli claims they are "12, more or less" but they are clearly much, much older. One can imagine that Håkan was once himself a little boy enraptured by a pretty mysterious kid next door, and eventually started collecting collecting bodies. 

But also, Eli and Oskar have a legitimate bond, even if it is really strange. Oskar is still too young to know anything of sexuality, and Eli is eternally a child. Eli climbs into Oskar’s bed naked, so there is intimacy of a kind. Oskar wants them to "go steady" while not really knowing what that means. Their relationship is hard to pin down with any traditional category.

Speaking of categories, this leads me to have to talk about the one thing I really don't want to talk about. I am outright uncomfortable on this issue. Eli tells Oskar that they are "not a girl". We do finally see what’s happened, and frankly, this is bad. I’ve seen horror movies before get very pre-occupied with a young child’s genitals as exploitation. I’m thinking of the notoriously mean-spirited ending to Sleepaway Camp. Let the Right One In is never that bad. Oskar does not care about Eli’s gender, loving them all the same. Eli’s monstrosity is not related to their body's shape. They are treated as sympathetic victims of a bad situation, just trying to survive on the fringes of the human (or heteronormative) world. There are good parts to this queer narrative, but I still think we really did not need to "see it". I never want to see what a child has between their legs used as a shock value. Never.

I have not read the book Let the Right One In is based on, but from what I’ve heard it is worse. There’s pedophilia in it, and if that were in this movie, I would be reviewing some other 2008 horror movie instead. (Lake Mungo is really cool.) The mostly fine but unnecessary English-language remake, Let Me In, directed by Matt Reeves, avoids the gender issues entirely. Its vampire, Abby, is a cis girl. That would make Let the Right One In more palatable. But there is something here in the Swedish original. You lose something essential by just sawing off the uncomfortable issues.

There’s a very creepy and disturbing air to Let the Right One In. It’s not necessary the queerness or the ages of the characters or their fascination with death. It is all of those things. It is also in the cold, Scandinavian winter air and the seemingly friendly population who have no toleration for outsiders. This community is one that has no space for Eli and Oskar. 

Let the Right One In is set in 1981, for seemingly no particular reason. That is until you remember how little space Western society had for queerness of any kind back then (or even now). The faculty mocks the one Russian teacher behind his back just because he makes mistakes with his Swedish. If a regular cis man in a respected profession is an outsider, what hope do our heroes have? Oskar was doomed to be one of the lost people of his culture. There is no place for these children. They have only each other.

So, of course, Let the Right One In is uncomfortable for us, the viewers. In 2021 we still have no space for these kids.

I need to also mention that Let the Right One In is a gorgeous, gorgeous movie. Not to go all "every shot a painting" on you all, but this is the prettiest movie we’ve covered so far, and it is not even close. There are certain images in this movie that people should write entire essays on. If I were a better writer, I could put 1000 words down on a few of them. The movie tells you quite a lot without dialog with just a shot the exterior of Oskar’s apartment. Oskar is framed alone in the left window, and the shadow of his parents are on the right, both arguing. You can see the vast separation happening between them, they live in totally different universes. 

Hoyte van Hoytema is the DP on this movie, and holy shit, is he doing fabulous work with shot symmetry and lighting. The image of over-lit woods early in the movie is just mesmerizing. Fully bravo, sir.

Let the Right One In is the most difficult movie yet. There are parts to this movie even I find to be way too much. But this is easily the most interesting movie we’ve covered. It might also be the very best movie I've reviewed this month. Tomorrow though, I need to talk about something easier.

Next Time we travel to 2009, the year of Hannah Montana conquering the cinema, a plane crash-landing in the Hudson River becoming the only good news for the entire year, and our next movie, Tetsuo: The Bullet Man.