Tribeca Review: Let The Right One In

Posted by Robin Ruinsky (robin@filmschoolrejects.com) on April 26, 2008

Tomas Alfredson has adapted John Ajivde Lindquivst’s novel “Let the Right One In” and made a vampire film that transcends the genre. Like any good horror film there’s blood, a vampire on the loose and also some rather crazed felines as it appears cats and vampires aren’t a good mix. But at the center of it all there’s the friendship between Oskar and Eli.

Set in 1982, the film opens with12-year-old Oskar watching his new neighbors move into the drab apartment complex which, this being Sweden in winter, is covered in so much snow we feel as if we’re on another planet.

Oskar is a pale blond boy, a frail and frightened child who is the target of bullies at school. Unable to bring himself to fight back, Oskar retreats into fantasies of violence.

Then this friendless boy meets Eli, the 12-year-old girl next door. When she moves in, the first thing we see is the older man who takes care of her. He’s putting up cardboard and posters to cover the windows. It’s our first hint that something is very different about Eli.

One night, Eli is perched on an old jungle gym, clad only in pants and a shirt against the severe Swedish winter. It’s the second sign we get that Eli isn’t exactly an ordinary 12-year-old.
When Oskar asks her if she’s cold she replies that she’s “forgotten how”.

Eli tells Oskar she can’t be his friend, but in spite of her determination to remain aloof a friendship between the two blossoms. Oskar gives Eli his rubik’s cube and she comes back the next night with it solved. Now Oskar wants to solve the puzzle that is Eli. We soon learn that even a vampire needs companionship and love; even a vampire has an aching heart.

Eli, we soon discover, has some unusual dietary requirements. She needs human blood.

This explains the sudden rash of gruesome murders in Oskar’s neighborhood. A teenager is found tied upside down to a tree, his blood drained. A neighbor hood man disappears leaving traces of blood in the snow. The first boy is killed by the man Eli calls her father. He goes out to procure blood for her, a sad, bungled attempt to keep her from having to kill to live.

When she has to take matters into her own hands to feed, we see the emotional pain it causes her after she’s not only ripped into the man’s throat but broken his neck for good measure. Luring her victim to her with cries for help she has no choice but to kill the Good Samaritan so she can survive.

Oskar is happy to have found a friend in this unusual girl who only comes out at night. But when Oskar cuts his hand so the two can mix their blood to seal their friendship it becomes very clear to him that his friend Eli is not be what she appears to be.

Eli being a vampire might make some people turn away from her, but not Oskar who loves his friend and the first feelings of romantic love she has awakened.

Both Eli and Oskar thrive because of their friendship. Oskar begins to gain confidence and strength while Eli becomes more of the child she once was.

Oskar teaches her Morse code so they can “talk” through their common bedroom wall. Their communication with Morse code will provide one of the film’s best moments.

The director approaches Eli’s vampire state in an unglamorous way. When Eli drinks blood she’s covered in it like a child who has eaten a melting ice cream cone. Her life is drab, she’s surviving but until she meets Oskar she’s not living. The apartment she lives in is barely furnished, cold, and empty. There’s no warmth in Eli’s life until she lets Oskar in. We want to know more about her, but she appears not to know much about herself. Only that she’s been 12 for a very long time.

The performances by the two young actors, are stunning. They have to carry the film and they do it with ease. Kare Hedebrant as Oskar adeptly portrays the fragile boy whose anger cannot destroy his gentle heart. Lina Leandersson makes Eli sympathetic even at her most threatening. With large blue eyes that make you believe she’s seen centuries, she still lets us see the child inside the vampire. She’s a perpetual adolescent, trapped forever, frozen in time.

Oskar is conflicted, but he still loves Eli and has to come to terms with accepting her as she is or forsaking her. The later is impossible for him to do.

The result of this mix of horror and coming of age is a fascinating film that pulls you in and keeps you riveted to the end.

Read more articles by Robin Ruinsky