Let the Right One In - A cross-genre masterpiece

Here is a film with child protagonists, but it is not a children’s film. It’s a horror flick to some extent, but is unlike any other of the genre.

Let the Right One In, Swedish director Tomas Alfredson’s 2008 production, is a cross-genre masterpiece. 

Based on a novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the screenplay, the movie at its core is about the innocence of first love, though it has elements of Gothicism, mythology, horror, psychology and Shakespearean tragedy with some sexual undertones. Spoilers ahead!!!

Oskar, a lonely 12-year-old always bullied by his schoolmates, befriends Eli, a girl his age, who has just moved in next door in suburban Stockholm in the 1980s. However, Eli is an enigmatic girl and appears too matured for her age -- she comes out of home only at night, doesn’t need warm clothes even in the harsh Swedish winter, smells ‘funny’ when she’s hungry, can effortlessly solve Rubik’s Cube, cannot stomach candies or things like that, and needs human blood to survive.

Yes, Eli is a blood-sucking vampire. She is 12, but she has been 12 for centuries. She lives with her guardian Hakan (Per Ragnar) a middle-aged man, who, it appears, is sympathetic to Eli’s condition and procures human blood for her so that she doesn’t have to do it all by herself.

It is through Eli that Oskar finds the strength to overcome his bullies and finds the love and attention that he was denied in his life hitherto. Oskar and Eli gel well as both of them are social misfits – while the former’s an introvert, partly due to his upbringing in a dysfunctional family and partly due to his lack of friends, the latter doesn’t socialize for obvious reasons.

As the movie progresses, we see the somewhat Platonic love between the preteen couple growing, though with tragic consequences.

Lina Leandersson (Eli) has given a spellbinding performance and is very well supported by  

Kare Hedebrant (Oskar). The rest of the cast members also play their parts to perfection.

The music by Johan Söderqvist matches the movie’s pace, while the cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema is incredible. Hoytema’s close-up shots with the focus on the eyes and chin of the kids make them deeply adorable despite the film’s violent backdrop.

The film is many things at the same time – its horrifying, yet uplifting; gruesome, yet tender; and slow-paced, yet a nail-biter. Let the Right One In is unlike any other movie you have ever seen.  10/10