Oh, The Horror! #16: Let The Right One In

I first heard about this Swedish vampire movie on a few message boards a few months ago. Every review and opinion I've read essentially praised it so I indeed was interested. Why wouldn't I be? I like vampires. But yeah, a week back my brother told me that he was planning on going to see "Let The Right One In" and I immediately took interest and told him I've been meaning to see it. So for my birthday (2 days ago) I decided we should see it the day after and was hoping to have a guy's night out with some of my best buds although most of them wasn't able to make it so it was just me, Berto, and Lebert "TeardropJones." Overall, the praises the movie was getting I would say is pretty much justified. The movie had a lot of heart to it as it's essential a story about alienation and a boy finding a connection with a girl who moves in next door who is revealed to be a vampire. The boy, Oskar, is constantly picked on at school by a boy and his crew and Eli, the vampire, gives Oskar confidence to finally stand up to him. Also, Eli basically becomes his best friend and his girlfriend. Seeing their relationship grow through each day is very interesting to watch despite Eli's thirst for blood which causes a big set of problems and events in their Sweden town which includes the death of a few townsmen and infecting someone else into becoming a vampire which later leads to a fantastic scene with cats. You'll have to see it for yourself to see why that scene was simply amazing.

I wish I could say more on the story but the story is very simple that saying much of anything else would surely spoil something and I wouldn't want to do that. It isn't like other vampire movies, it's really more about two outsiders befriending, accepting, and being there for each other. Although rather slow in the beginning, the story begins to really pick up when Eli's thirst really starts to come into the central plot. There were also some fantastic special effects. A few that took place in a hospital and one amazing one in the end when Oskar has his final confrontation with the bullies. I found it to be a really heart-ful ending and was beautifully shot. I can see a few film lovers buying the DVD just for those final shots of the confrontations with the bullies.

So yes, if you can definitely check out this movie. I looked up some stuff online and saw that it was previously a novel and there were a lot of themes that were omitted from the movie. And there's suppose to be an American version coming out which is supposedly suppose to be remade from thebook rather than the Swedish movie. We'll see how that comes out although my brother and I are a bit iffy about that.

I'll leave a final quote that Lebert said when we exited the theater that gave me a good chuckle, "Man, movies like this is what makes me think about being a vegetarian."