Let The Right One In (2008)0

‘Let The Right One In’ is a Swedish film directed by Tomas Alfredson, star­ring Kare Hedebrant (as Oskar) and Lina Leandersson (as Eli). Eli is a vam­pire; she needs to avoid sun­light and can only sur­vive by drink­ing blood. She can­not con­sume any­thing else but blood. Oskar is a boy who is often picked on by other boys in the same class. The 115 min­utes of run­time shows how two out­casts of society/school fight for their sur­vival, both phys­i­cally and emo­tion­ally. This film is hor­ri­fy­ing, but not in the sense of heavy usage of sound effects and sud­den appear­ances of mon­sters. It is the under­ly­ing mes­sages that are scary. We see how peo­ple change to adapt and to fight when dri­ven to the extreme. Eli’s care­taker sac­ri­fices him­self to pro­tect Eli, Eli kills for sur­vival and Oskar turns bad to pro­tect him­self. We also see other ugly sides of human nature in the film – peo­ple who wit­ness a mur­der remain­ing silent so as to avoid the trou­ble of being a wit­ness and peo­ple who only dare to pick on the weak. The film is also pre­sented in a cold and chilly mood. All loca­tions and cos­tumes are either white or some other dull colour, mak­ing white the dom­i­nant colour through­out the film. The mise-en-scene speaks for the character’s emo­tions. White can also sym­bol­ize sim­plic­ity, which blends in well with the young char­ac­ters. They have but a sim­ple wish – to sur­vive in peace. There is one very minor scene that left a huge impact on me which is the scene with Eli’s care­taker eat­ing an apple. When this scene was first shown, it did not mean any­thing. It was only until the part where we come to learn that vam­pires can­not con­sume any other thing except blood, that we then find out that the so-called ‘father’ of Eli is a human, and not a vam­pire, thus allow­ing to sus­pect that he is not the father of Eli. I felt that the usage of one lit­tle action to drop such a huge hint was done beau­ti­fully. The final killing scene was very unique. Instead of see­ing the actual killing, we only get to see the out­come, which took place below the sur­face of the swim­ming pool. We see bro­ken limps and heads drop­ping into the swim­ming pool while Oskar remains igno­rant to every­thing. Action fanat­ics are sure to com­plain. I per­son­ally felt that this was bet­ter, as I believe it cre­ates a stronger impact than to chore­o­graph an entire fight­ing sequence. Showing a fight­ing sequence at the end might make it too com­mer­cial and thus lose appeal. The film ends abruptly, with Oskar trav­el­ling some­where in the train with a huge box with Eli inside hid­ing from the sun­light. Eli can­not be seen, but when they com­mu­ni­cate using Morse code, (they use this code to com­mu­ni­cate many times in the film), it is made known that Eli is in the box. The end­ing of the film leaves the audi­ence pon­der­ing. I per­son­ally feel that Oskar had now taken over the role of Eli’s care­taker. Yes, I feel that ‘the end’ was some­where in the begin­ning of the film. Eli will not grow old, phys­i­cally, but Oskar will. And one day Oskar might go out killing peo­ple to help Eli like what her pre­vi­ous care­taker did. I believe that the film is try­ing to show the end­less and help­less­ness of Eli’s eter­nal strug­gle, which depicts a part of our own real­ity, where some peo­ple, like Eli, do every­thing they can just to sur­vive. All in all, if you are look­ing to have a good scream from hor­ror movies that cre­ate ter­ror through sud­den appear­ances of super­nat­ural beings, don’t bother see­ing this one because it isn’t your every­day hor­ror film. This film scares peo­ple through the harsh truth of human nature, which sends chills down your spine, leav­ing you feel­ing dis­turbed. I give it 4 out of 5 stars. Reviewed by Wee Kiat