206) Let the Right One In (2006)

Son of Halloween 2024's spectacular and not random vampire movie review extravaganza! (Part Ten...the final vampire, for now)

Director
Tomas Alfredson

Cast
Kåre Hedebrant - Oskar
Lina Leandersson - Eli
Per Ragnar - Håkan
Henrik Dahl - Erik
Karin Bergquist - Yvonne
Peter Carlberg - Lacke
Ika Nord - Virginia
Mikael Rahm - Jocke

After two overall terrible vampire movies, despite  some of the good things they both have going for them, I wanted to end this Son of Halloween 2024's spectacular and not random vampire movie review extravaganza with something well made...maybe even sublime. 

The 2006 Swedish horror film "Let the Right One In," based on the 2004 novel of the same title by John Ajvide Lindqvist, is a movie I had in mind to include in this thread since I thought up this year's Halloween movie extravaganza. And as I've mentioned in previous posts, I love saying the word "extravaganza." This movie is a unique story when it comes to vampires. 

The movie, which takes place in the early 1980s in Blackeberg, Stockholm, centers around a young Swedish boy, Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant), who's a bit of a loner. 

He's unmercifully bullied at school by a small clique of boys. He lives in an apartment with his mother, Yvonne, (Karin Bergquist) while his father lives elsewhere. 

Meanwhile, mysterious and brutal murders are occurring around the neighborhood. The person responsible is a man named Håkan (Per Ragnar) who hoists victims upside down by their feet, cuts their throats, and collects their blood. He does this because he lives with a 12-year-old girl vampire named Eli (Lina Leandersson) who needs blood to survive. Håkan and Eli happen to live in the apartment next door to Oskar. 

Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson in "Let the Right One In."

However, he's unaware of these two until he meets Eli one evening out in the apartment courtyard. 

Oskar spends time alone at night wandering outside pretending to inflict revenge on his tormentors at school. 

One night, Eli sees him alone outside the apartment and talks to him. Oskar takes a bit of an interest in Eli as she appears to be his age. At first, she tells Oskar that she cannot be his friend without giving a reason. 

However, they slowly become friends. He opens up to her about the bullying he endures at school. And she encourages him to defend himself.

So, he enrolls in an after-school fitness class with hopes he can build up some muscle. 

Later, Håkan attempts to murder a passer-by in a secluded area in order to collect blood for Eli one evening but is interrupted by someone else out walking their dog. So, he runs off before getting caught.  He returns home with nothing to bring back to her. 

Eli has to go out into the night and attack someone herself to feed on. She lures a man named Jocke by pretending to be a young child in need and stranded out in the cold. 

When she returns to the apartment, Håkan goes back out to hide Jocke's body by dumping his remains in a frozen river. 

He tries again to collect blood for Eli by tying up a teenage boy after school one night in a locker room long after school hours. 

However, the boy's friends come looking for him and the boy wakes up before Håkan kills him and starts shouting for help. 

He hides elsewhere in the school hoping to avoid detection. In order to prevent being recognized, Håkan pours acid on his face. 

He's soon arrested and taken to a hospital first for treatment. Eli goes to see him that same night. Since he's in custody and will no longer be able to provide for her, Håkan offers his neck to her. She accepts the offer, drinks, and he plummets to his death out of the hospital window. 

Eli goes to see Oskar, while he's in bed. She taps on his window and asks him to invite her in. He asks how she managed to get up to his window as his apartment is several stories off the ground.

She simply says that she flew and them spends the night in his room. 

Now, he's all she has to take care of her. And she's the only friend he has. 

"Let the Right One In" keeps the vampire lore in a realistic style while being its own story unlike other vampire movies out there. 

I've heard it called a "coming of age" story, and I suppose it is for Oskar. Still, it's not the first movie with vampire children. Outside of probably a ton of made-for-children movies with vampire depictions suitable for children, Kirsten Dunst as Claudia in the 1994 movie, "Interview with a Vampire" is the only one that comes to mind right now. 

Kåre Hedebrant's performance makes his character sympathetic and memorable.

He and Lina Leandersson have true chemistry. Kåre's performance supports Lina's role as he needs to give her, as a vampire, a reason to befriend him and have the audience appreciate her doing that. That must have been a challenge. 

Though the movie carries themes of bullying and friendship, I'm torn as to what Eli's true intentions are from the moment she meets Oskar all the way to the end of the story. I couldn't tell if she was deceiving Oskar with her friendship to make him her next servant. Or, if she sincerely wanted friendship just as much as Oskar. Maybe there's a bit of both? 

My suspicions lean more into the side that Eli is really recruiting young Oskar to be a servant for her, whom she'll later command to kill people so that she can feed. 

In the scene when Oskar realizes Eli is a vampire, she admits that she is. She doesn't hide it. Oskar is rightly bothered by her need to kill people so she can feed. Still, he choses to remain a friend, even encouraging her to go steady.

She tells him they are a lot alike. Oskar has a secret desire to kill his bullies, while Eli needs to kill. 

She then tells Oskar, "Be me, for a little while." 

This sentiment gives the movie's title meaning - "Let the Right One In." 

Evil can disguise itself as good, but evil can't be anything other than what it is. 

Eli is the strength Oskar that lacks which is why he gravitates towards her. Or, it could be her vampiric lure to make him her slave. After all, he sees adults, even his divorced mother and father, as not too interested in his problems and situations. His mom is too busy. His father seems to include him because he has to. This certainly works in Eli's favor.   

As a vampire, she personifies the fact that true evil is willing to deceive in any way it can to ultimately drag souls down alongside them. The devil is the father of lies. In which case, perhaps the film is a cautionary tale about becoming comfortable and familiar with evil which ultimately seeks to enslave. 

Despite being a vampire, she never hints at any desire to feed on Oskar. 

In a later scene, Oskar takes her to a hideaway and wants to become blood siblings. He slices his palm and wants her to do the same to her hand. The idea is that they'll shake hands, and mingle their blood. Instead of cutting her hand, she can't hide her insatiable thirst for blood once she sees it as he naively stands in front of her with his hand out dripping blood. Instead of attacking him, she takes to the drops of blood on the floor and tells him to leave. 

The movie also adds a little to the vampire lore in that it shows what happens to a vampire if they enter a house without being verbally invited in. 

"Let the Right One In" got an American remake called "Let Me In" in 2010 with Chloë Grace Moretz, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Richard Jenkins and Elias Koteas. I watched it several years ago shortly after I watched the Swedish film, and I can't remember anything about it. 

Anyways, this is a very unique vampire story that emotes more feelings of sympathy rather than fear, although it does possess some fear and horror elements as is needed in a vampire movie. A lot of the older Dracula movies have a bit of a fairy tale tone to them to some degree or another. This movie maintains a taste of that style, but with much more realism, or real-life style to it. And it's perfectly subtle and thought provoking.

🧛 So, that's another horror movie extravaganza in the bag...or on the blog...or where ever it needs to be. I had a lot of vampire movies I wanted to watch and include. Some I couldn't get my hands on for some reason or another, and others I would have had to pay for which I didn't want to do. 

As for the rest, there's just not enough time to get to all of them. My initial intent was to watch one Dracula/vampire movie from each decade between 1922 to 2024. Well, I made it to 2006, and watched 10 movies which is a number I decided to stick with. So, not bad. Below is a list of other movies I had considered including in this list, or tried to include. I'm certain I'll get to some of these in the future. 

"Vampyr" (1932)

"Vampire Bat" (1933)

"Mark of the Vampire" (1935)

"House of Dracula" (1945)

"The Vampire's Ghost" (1945)

"Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948)

"The Vampire" (1957)

"Kiss of the Vampire" (1963)

"The Fearless Vampire Killers" (1967)
"The Vampire Lovers" (1970)

"Blacula" (1972)
"Son of Dracula" (1974) - This one has Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson, Peter Frampton and other rock stars! What the heck? 

"Zoltan... Hound of Dracula" (1977)

"Salem's Lot" (1979) 

"Fright Night" (1985)

"Vamp" (1986)

"The Lost Boys" (1987)

"Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992)

"Interview with the Vampire" (1994)

"Vampire in Brooklyn" (1995) - Eddie Murphy plays a vampire in this movie. 

"From Dusk Till Dawn" (1996)

"Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" (2012)

"What We Do in the Shadows" (2014) - I regret picking "Dracula: Dead and Loving It" over this comedy. 

"The Last Voyage of the Demeter" (2023)

🎃 Happy Halloween!🦇