Let the Right One In
2008
Directed by Tomas Alfredson
We have reached the conclusion of our scary movie month, which is just as well, because I was really running out of horror entries. I hope everyone has a great Halloween. I know I will be consuming candy corn by the pound in honor of this sacred day.
Oskar lives with his mother Yvonne in a suburb of Stockholm. Oskar is regularly bullied by the kids in his school and fantasizes often about getting revenge. He meets his new next door neighbor, Eli, a pale girl his age who resides with a mysterious older man. The two become close, although it is apparent that Eli is not quite what she seems. Things get pretty gross.
I am not sure anyone gets genuinely frightened by vampires. While there are some images in this film that are...unsettling, I am not sure I would even classify this is as a horror movie. It's more like a romance that is occasionally disgusting. The filmmakers make up for this by including many shots of pure beauty.
Despite the unusual juxtaposition, I still found my attention waning. I could see where the narrative was going to take us and I spent most of the film waiting for characters to figure out what the audience already knew.
I would recommend this if you are in the mood for something different, but if you are looking for something scary, please see my previous raves.
RATING: ***--
Interesting Facts:
Almost every scene contains the color red. When are we all going to stop ripping off The Sixth Sense?
OK, I will start by say I really like this one, so I feel slightly cautious as you ended up giving it only 3..
ReplyDeleteI will then rather astound you by admitting I also liked the American remake..
That said, you raise some very good points .. vampire films are not really scary. well except the Twilight stuff, which is really scary -in that they keep making so much of that shit.
So, yes, unsettling. But I think it was supposed to be ..In that we felt a bit queasy about the somewhat paedophile thing ... But then realise that the older guy she appears with was an 'Oskar' from a few years back. We are supposed to be fine with the two of them (Eli & Oskar) getting together .. "Awwww the two misfits finding someone , bless". But he will grow, mature, age, but she won't physically grow older, and in 15, 20 years, poor Oscar will be rejected as he becomes the dodgy middle aged seedy guy we think is a creep for living with an underage girl. His feelings haven't changed for her..
I didn't even realize there was a remake. I figured you would like this one, Ray, as you tend to go for the more eerie films rather than gory horror movies.
ReplyDeleteHey, nicely put .. 'eerie films rather than..'.I like that description. .. And yes, absolutly.
ReplyDeleteLast night, I wasn't feeling at all sleepy, and for some reason I had the idea I wanted to re-watch this.
ReplyDeleteIt gets better and better..
PLOT SPOILER ALERT for other regulars who haven't gotthis far into the list yet
But I also did some more reading up about it, mostly about interpretations of the 'helper', Haken and the differences between the film and the book.
In the film it's perhaps ambiguous. See above, and you will recall I took it that Haken was, many years ago, an Oskar who had the failing of being a normal human who grew old...
That to me was the horror of this film, that history would repeat itself for ever... every 40 years or so, a new slave helper who would be rather heartlessly, but by necessity, be dumped. No matter how much affection there was between them now, she would need to discard Oscar in the same way.
Well, in the book, it's simple. Hakan IS a seedy creep with a penchant for young boys, he and Eli met up when he was 40ish, a terminally depressed alcoholic after loosing his job for being too interested in 12 yr olds.
OK, but my excuse is that you can take the book and the film as two separate entities... and I think I can claim that my reading of the horror of the film is still valid. So there.
... And, as I've been in bed over a week with some nasty lurgy, I thught I'd move on to re-watch 'Let me in'.. the American / English language remake, which I noticed I'd said was also good.
DeleteWith the wisdom of time passing, I'm afraid the gap between my opinion has widened quite a lot.. Stick with the Swedish version.. it has more atmosphere .. as Amanda put it, it is more eerie. I first put 'it is eerier' but somehow that didn't sound right, despite spell check accepting it as a valid word.
Haha christmas is always a good time to revisit horror movies.
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