Vampires are a pretty trendy topic these days and for whatever reason people love incorporating them into weird romances. Let the Right One In brings this to a new level of creepy by having its couple be awkward twelve year olds. Oskar is a reclusive kid who gets bullied at school and Eli is a vampire who has been twelve “for a long time.” He collects newspaper clippings about murders and she lives with a creepy older man who collects blood for her. They are both so strange and uncomfortable that it made it hard to care about them as protagonists.
Another minor issue I had with Let the Right One In is I was made too aware that it was adapted from a book. There are a bunch of little instances when the film introduces something that seems important and then never follows up with it. There was one scene like this that really seemed out of place. Oskar is visiting his dad's house (his parents are separated) and is having a good time, but then a man comes in and it gets really awkward. Oskar's dad starts drinking and then the scene ends. Neither the dad nor the other guy are in the rest of the movie. It seems likely to me that they both play a more important role in the book, but if you're going to leave most of that part out then why introduce them at all?
Neither the creepy protagonists nor the few loose threads are enough to completely kill the experience of the movie, and it was so gritty and dark it was definitely an experience. I feel like that's what people are usually looking for in their horror films, but as someone who's generally not a fan of the genre Let the Right One In didn't do much for me.
Six out of Ten.
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