Let the right one [slip] in

I finally watched “Let the Right One In” the most anticipated *drumroll please* Swedish horror movie. I saw the trailer around a year ago, and I just couldn't wait for it. Like I couldn't wait for Christmas. That's a weird analogy, but if you're a horror movie buff like me, you'd understand how hard it is to find a horror movie that could surprise you (in a good way.)

It seems that vampire is a hot movie topic (NO thanks for turning something eerie and macabre into something cheesy and ridiculous, Twilight!) but LTROI is nothing like the stereotypes. It is so much more than just immortality, blood drinking and pale faces in it. Or, let me put it this way, there're some interesting vampire facts we can learn from this movie.

Set in frozen rural Sweden, we are introduced to Oskar. He is 12 years old, and he lives with his mom who's a divorcée. Oscar is an awkward kid, his friends bully him, and he spends most of his time alone. Sometimes he plays in an empty playground that covered with thick snows. Hoyte van Hoytema, the D.O.P, is half Dutch, half Swedish and he makes everything in the movie looks and feels just about right and enough. He meticulously captured the enveloping snow, wintery light, and remarkable stillness, they look so beautiful to gaze at. It is almost like you could feel the cold, and the loneliness Oscar has to face.

So, when Oscar met Eli, you'd feel this strange emotion because you’d want Oscar to be friend with a girl who has lived as a 12 years old since like forever. Maybe because oddly, immortals like vampires are capable of feeling the same way as us, mortals with beating hearts. Oscar feels that only Eli can understand his misery and Eli knows that Oscar too understands what pain is like. Pain and misery, they are like twins, lovers or Oscar and Eli, they belong together.

There’s something achingly romantic about Eli and Oscar relationship, it is like both of them are washed up by darkness on the shore of despair. It is so emotionally involving, and things Eli says and does are unexpectedly terrifying.  LTROI is a serious vampire movie that would leave you feeling grim.

“Let the Right One In” is rated R
Directed by Tomas Alfredson
written [in Swedish, with English subtitles] by John Ajvide Lindqvist, based on his novel of the same name [taken from Morrisey's song -> Let the Right One Slip in]
director of photography, Hoyte van Hoytema