Let The Right One In

Let The Right One In is one of my favorite picks from the horror films shown in class (the other two being Pontypool and The Orphanage). Not having expected it to be so good and be quite as unforgettable now while viewing the first few minutes of the film, Let The Right One In has taught me that good films come even from the most unlikely sources (in this case, Sweden, a country whose cinemtic culture and trends I barely know of).


The horror in Let The Right One In is expertly woven into the romance budding in the two young protagonists of the film (I think I like it precisely because it mixes horror successfully and seamlessly with another genre). This horror comes primarily from the fact that one is a vampire, but aside from this basic premise, the more horrific aspect of the narrative comes in the finale when the bullying experienced by the main child protagonist comes to its most brutal, most inhuman point. Perhaps scarier (weird, of all the reviews I've written so far, this is the first time the word "scare" has finally surfaced) than the situation of bullying is the attitude of acceptance with which the child responds to it, calmly letting the bad ass bully grab his hair and drown him without any protest. It is striking that of all the horrifying moments shown in the film, this is the most terrifying for me, making me appreciate it all the more, as horror is finally tracked down to its most fundamental of sources--the horror of human evil.

Notable also in the film is its approach to adapting the source novel. I realize this after reading up on both the film and the novel and seeing that the film took care to be ambiguous enough to allow for the unsavory details found in the novel to still be presented as possibilites in the film instead of either showing them directly (and thus alienating mainstream audiences witht he controversial content--the homosexual nature of the relationship between the two children and the fact that the child vampire's companion is in truth a pedophile waiting on the opportunity when he will finally be granted sexual favors by the child) or ruling them out altogether. This wise creative decision makes the experience of viewing the film as text and adapted text in relation to source texts much more fulfilling, rewarding more layers of understanding as one gets deeper into the mythology of the story. This boldness to leave out these things ambiguous cast a shadow on the upcoming American remake which reportedly took out all these unpleasant details to settle for an adaptation that might simplify the story, leaving no room for intertextual referencing and coloring.