"Let the Right One In" (movie)

At first I thought Cat had struck out for the first time on a movie as the acting in this one is specifically not too good except for the kids, Oskar (Kare Hedebrandt) and Eli (Lina Leandersson), particularly Eli who did a very impressive job.  The version of "Let the Right One In" was the original Swedish film shot in 2008 and it was with subtitles but Hollywood did a remake, presumably in English, in 2010.

This is obviously a love story and secondarily a vampire movie but whether it's really about vampires is for you to judge as that's kind of a shallow interpretation.  It's also ostensibly a horror movie and it's gruesome in terms of the blood but it's really not very horrifying except in concept and it's definitely not scary.  Horror movies scare the living hell out of me and Cat knows this but she said watch it anyway so ok ... on with the show.

The fascination in the movie is the question: if Eli is not a vampire then what is she.  This is not a cookbook and I don't have a cake for you but it's worth watching the movie to find out for yourself and bake a cake of your own.  During the course of the movie Oskar falls in love with Eli as she does with him and he ultimately Oskar replaces the man who had been taking care of her when the story started.  Presumably he was the last kid who fell in love with her.

Something that radically separates this from Hollywood is a delicate eroticism in the portrayal of these kids which is likely true for kids that age discovering each other.  It's all the more part of the story in that Eli is ostensibly much older and more mature than her apparent twelve years.

Really the question to you doesn't have much to do with vampires but rather it is how much you will do or give for love so that's where I'll leave it.  How much indeed.


Note:  if you download the Swedish version, look out for the subtitle track skipping out a several scenes before the end.  Even without the subtitles you will be able to follow the last part but it's a cheap trick by whomever did that.  You just can't always count on these damn movie pirates.