Let the Right One In

Let the Right One In is the Swedish vampire masterpiece from director Tomas Alfredson no one's been taking about. This film and book blew me away. I really can't praise it enough. First off, Let The Right One In isn't like the Twilight teen garbage. Now, it is a romance, a love story, but a very fresh one. It doesn't hang on the whole forbidden love stuff.







This is the story of 2 lonely 12 year olds set in a west Stockholm suburb. Oskar has almost no friends...until the girl next door moves in. Her name is Eli, played by the wonderful Lina Leandersson. She a bit weird though. She stinks, is extremely skinny, and doesn't even know what a Rubik's Cube is! But Oskar slowly falls in love with her. Eli give him this strength he never had.





Soon mysterious murders start to happen all around him. Eli had employed a elderly pedophile to do her dirty work. Everyone freaks out.








Eventually Oskar finds out his friend is a 200 year old vampire, and not only that, but a genderless vampire. But that's what makes this so different. Here is a kink in the wire that isn't found in any other vampire story.




That brings me to the difference between the book and the film. Both are perfect, but the book to film jump can never work out perfectly. Lindqvist's novel is 480 pages. The movie is 1 hour and 49 minutes. The book is deeply rooted in subplot and back story. And well, the movie doesn't have all that. It seems shallow and fleshed out compared to the book, but hey, that's the way it has to be. Still, the movie has a subtilness that the book doesn't, espesically in Eli's genderless issue.




All and all, see the film. And read the book if you want. Well, in the movie's defence, there stuff in the book that you just cant show in film. But hey, Let The Right One In is still one of the best films of 2008 and the greatest vampire film OR book ever (in my eyes).





Oh and by the way, they're already making an english remake.