The vampire movie genre has become so hopelessly imbued with the increasily cheesy image of Count Dracula and the overtly romanticized Twilight vampires, that it’d be a waste of time to argue that the film Let the Right One In could redeem the genre as a whole. When watching this film, it is best to forget the vampire context entirely and instead judge it with fresh expectations: not as a horror or romance movie, but as a film reframing human loneliness.
Oskar, the protagonist, with his elvish white hair and equally pale skin, is the perfect picture of adolescent frailty. Nothing conveys loneliness better than the spindly twelve-year old kid being viciously assaulted by school bullies. He is entirely defenseless against his tormentors, and when set against the stark landscape of Swedish winter, his despair is painfully palpable.
By the time his unlikely savior appears in the shape of a small scruffy girl, Eli, we’ve already grown a strong attachment to Oskar. Despite showing hints of nascent homicidal tendencies, such as collecting newspaper clippings of murder cases and habitually play-acting stabbing his bullies, Oskar and his alienation in his divorced home background and complete friendlessness stirs our own childhood memories of loneliness. He carries a deep-rooted longing for understanding that is seeded in each and every one of us, and watching Eli finally fulfilling Oskar’s aching need of a friend is nearly cathartic. The fact that she happens to be a centuries-old vampire and that she possesses a pedophilic, middle-aged caretaker, Håkan, fades away into the background when watching her and Oskar experience emotional intimacy for the first time. As they are lying in bed together, Eli playfully tapping her fingers along Oskar’s back, she is no longer a brutal murderer and he is no longer the troubled child. They are simply two children, bound by a keen longing for companionship.
The film’s poignancy rises, not just from its ability to draw out our empathy, but on its contextual dissection of the human condition: isolation. Each character, such as the bullies, Håkan, and Oskar’s neighbors, are all marked by traces of loneliness, whether it be helplessly tormenting Oskar in fear of being bullied himself or living alone in a dim apartment broiling with cats. More importantly, each one has found themselves an object of worship: the schoolkid worships the bully leader, the isolated neighbor worships his cats, Håkan worships Eli, and more. Though the film does not rely heavily on religious references, Eli serves in clearly establishing the film’s existential worldview. Oskar, in his suffering, has created himself a religion. First, by poring over the murder-case newspaper clippings and recreating himself as a brutal avenger in his imagination, then by selecting Eli as his physical deity. Eli becomes his messiah, in a fitting reflection of her namesake, the Biblical prophet Eli.
Oskar’s obsessive reliance on this self-imposed religion, however, is not portrayed as a perversion, but rather, an innately human experience. It is a clear portrayal of carnal longing, the desire to fill an inner loneliness, that we, by nature, can fully identify with. Here, the real enemy is not violence nor the loss of morality, as many gore-ridden films are prone to depicting, but isolation. Isolation is the ultimate enemy that everyone fights individually, regardless of situation or social position. In other words, in the film (and perhaps in reality), isolation is humanity’s universal condition. Regardless of how much love one may receive or pour into another, the inner void can only be partially filled, and one is thereby forced to constantly seek objects of worship as temporary alleviation. Isolation is the greatest problem that remains unsolvable, and therefore, any attempt to solve it, no matter how destructive or morally ambiguous, is fully justifiable.
This worldview is further heightened by the film’s use of realism. Violence itself is presented as a natural act; it is an examination of human nature running its course, or rather, human nature given its chance to reveal itself. Stylistic choices, such as showing most of Eli’s attacks as long shots, having the massacre to take place off-screen, and avoiding the use of visual clichés such as jump-cuts and rapid cutting, allow for an objective consideration. Such assaults seem like a matter of survival: Eli finds no joy in killing her human victims, and when Håkan, her helper, murders for her sake, there’s an emphasis on his human clumsiness and horrifying matter-of-factness. Håkan is forced to drag a corpse on a red, plastic sleigh, comically grunting and slipping through the dense snow, and even shoos away a passerby’s poodle that starts lapping at a pool of blood. The violence becomes all the more understandable and relatable, because the film purposefully includes the messy, physical details that precedes or preludes the real killing of people.
The film surpasses most standard depictions of deity worship by redefining what is the ideal god. Eli has spent centuries in alienation, receiving one-sided love from a series of human servants. This indicates that Eli, despite possessing the incredible strength that Oskar needs in defeating his bullies, has equal need of Oskar and his love. This is the exact god we want for ourselves: a god who, despite possessing the greater power we desire, loves us because it needs us. It is not a god that only demands worship, but rather, returns our worship. Perhaps this is why this film so effectively draws us in– it is the depiction of an equivalent exchange, like an ideal human relationship, and of a god figure stunningly made sympathetic.
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