Let the Right One In- Director: Tomas Alfredson

This was quite an interesting movie. The slow pacing became very tedious in the beginning but I hardly noticed it after Oskar met Eli. It was a nice change from other horror movies. But by the time the movie ended, I felt little had been accomplished.


The tone of the movie became progressively creepier, while at first I watched it without apprehension. By the end I found myself glancing away at the quiet, and deliberately at the slow scenes. The pool scene was gory and at the same time achieved in a subtle way, a head falling in the water and a disembodied arm following after. This was the only moment out of the entire film where I felt a twinge of fear.

The movie didn't really engage me. The two characters that we were supposed to be invested in didn't have much of a personality. Oskar has one of the most inattentive parents in the world, with the vampire coming and going from the apartment. His mother is completely oblivious to the fact that he had been bullied at school. But this the extent of my sympathy for his character.  While yes, I pitied Oskar for all of the bullying he put up with and his strained relationship with the divorced parents, there wasn't much else. Eli shares none of her backstory, so the audience doesn't have much reason to feel empathetic with her. By the end of the movie, I was dissatisfied by the fact that nothing was really explained. Oskar just hopped on a train with a chest (Eli inside) and escaped all of those murder scenes? No police appeared. No investigations into the various, out of the ordinary deaths.

I left this movie with one predominant thought; I do not want to visit Sweden.