Let the Right One In [2008]
"- You have to invite me in.
-- What happens if I don't?"
While some things have to be judged based on the environment into which they were released, it's difficult to allow films with unilateral acclaim the leeway of such distinctions. It could be that vampires are no longer the two dimensional, tired villains of previous eras now that we have the poster children of sparkling teen angst of Twilight, the complex contempt of Castlevania, and the genius comedy of What We Do In The Shadows. It could be that subtle storytelling isn't so outlandish in horror films with the releases of His House, Swallow, and It Comes at Night. Or, it could be simply that a romance movie about 12-year-olds is weird. Whatever the case, the Swedish smash hit Let The Right One In seems to have lost its teeth with age.
No doubt masterfully crafted from it's cinematography to its score, the story that Right One tells, just doesn't hold up anymore. While it does a mostly good job of establishing relationships between even minor characters to make a meaningful series of events on screen; in the end, the tale told takes the easy and exciting way out instead of the heart-wrenching and touching one.
I would have loved to see this film as it debuted to really give it a fair shake and then revisit it in 2021, rather than have my initial watch be 13-years after its release. 13-years is a long time for an emotional film to hold up, but looking back at modern greats of scifi-romance, from 2004's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to 2013's Her; there are simply too many films that stand the test of time to allow this one the credit it's still given. Even the American remake of 2010 receives high praise despite its predictably heavy-handed approach to the source material.
Had writer John Ajvide Lindqvist adapted the ending away from the revenge-love-murder of the novel and film as we know it, we could have had a heavily emotional ending that lasted and mattered.
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We should have been shown a more subtle and melancholy montage of Oskar aging and experiencing fleeting but passionate loves as a teen and young adult, then a more robust and deeper love as a mature and then aged man, culminating in him being happy but never quite being fulfilled. In the end -- old and frail -- he returns to the courtyard where first he met the vampire girl who he never forgot. As he sits on the now rusted and forgotten jungle-gym, he is alone -- as alone as he's felt all his life. Only, he isn't alone. For, as the camera pans back across the courtyard and centers his chosen seat into frame, we see that she is now sitting behind him. He pauses and breathes deeply -- not daring to blow his lifelong dream away, lest a dream be once again all it is -- and produces the Rubik's Cube that first drew them together from his old coat. She laughs from behind him and the relief that this is real, that she's really here, is plain on his face as she plucks it from his hands and completes it before setting it down in the snow beside him. They laugh over a joke only they understand while we get a shot, mimicking their first meeting, with her feet -- still clearly young, unchanged -- behind him as he faces the camera. He turns to face her for one, final time, and the shot cuts away so that we then see the two of them full bodied, both as children once more. We hold on the two of them simply looking at each other and smiling as the snow falls around them... credits.
With a slower, more nuanced and upsetting ending that grasped the deep emotional tones the film tried to get across, I think this would have truly been something to still celebrate but, instead, it's mostly thrown away with the action-revenge conclusion we currently have.
In the end, Let The Right One In sucks more than it surprises, and not in the way that would satiate even the smallest creature of the night.
"- If I wasn't a girl... would you like me anyway?
-- I suppose so."
