Movie Review: “Let the Right One In”
Lina Leandersson in “Let the Right One In.”
Rating: 88
When it’s not being played strictly for visceral shocks, vampirism symbolizes the plight of the “other,” the outcast who cannot control that inextricable trait that sets her or him apart. So it only makes sense that “Let the Right One In” would succeed as a story about teenage outcasts, since few films get to the heart of adolescent alienation, and do it so chillingly.
In this Swedish import showing Thursday through Sunday at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) is a pre-teen living with his divorced mother in a dreary Stockholm apartment complex. Constantly preyed upon by bullies and unnoticed by most others, Oskar can only fantasize about exacting revenge against his tormentors. But Eli (Lina Leandersson), the sunken-eyed 12-year-old girl next door, has bigger problems. She must send her father — if he is, in fact, her father — out to kill for her by hanging victims upside down and letting the blood seep from their bodies.
Eli is a mystery, since Oskar only sees her at night and their relationship is a careful, tentative dance. She insists that he fight back against the taunts of class psycho Conny (Patrik Rydmark), and she is affectionate toward the boy, but all vampires must feed. Eli’s father eventually drops from the picture and Eli must do her own dirty work, putting her odd little romance with Oskar in constant jeopardy.
Director Tomas Alfredson wisely keeps the bloodsucking shocks to a minimum, which gives them considerably more power — a scene involving one of Eli’s victims and a roomful of house pets belongs in the pantheon of horror. But “Let the Right One In” is at its spookiest during those quiet moments when Oskar and Eli are together, and the line between tenderness and violence is treated as though electric. It is a haunting film, but the vampire next door is only slightly scarier than that perennial tale of terror, the onset of adolescence.
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