Let The Right One In (2008)

Like most people I like vampires. There’s just something about the mythological creatures that is interesting. They are powerful on the outside but they are actually extremely weak. They suffer from bloodlust, seclusion, death by sunlight and countless other things explored in the extensive literature and filmography dedicated to them. There are always hits and misses.

Let The Right One In was one of these hits. It’s extremely popular and sits within IMDB’s Top 250 films.

Yet I have to say I don’t like it.

That’s not to say I hate this Swedish film, I just had issues with it. I’ll save myself a little here from the people who automatically want to kill me because of this by saying the film does have many positives.

For a start it is beautifully shot. Anyone who says it isn’t is a liar. They’d also be a liar if they were to say that the directing is bad, which it isn’t. The film also has a fairly decent plot going on and the vampires in the film are exactly what we like to see from vampire movies. They are the classic blood sucking vampires that die if they go into sunlight and can fly. Perfect.

Sadly, I did find that there were a lot of things that let it down. Though I do say that the plot is decent it is far too spread out. There’s a plot point, then a while of nothingness, then another plot point, then more nothingness. The film just lingers and keeps going without anything happening and when the film is 100 minutes long this just gets boring. This annoyed me as I wanted to get invested in the plot and I wanted to care, but the pacing made it so I couldn’t.

It’s difficult to talk too much about the plot itself as so little seems to happen. What I can gather is that there is a boy who is bullied and a vampire girl, Eli, who has just moved in next door to him. She teaches him to be courageous and they start going out. That’s pretty much it. There’s a subplot about people trying to find who has been killing people (it’s Eli) but it doesn’t really go anywhere.

Then we have the acting. It might be due to the fact this is a foreign film but the acting, in my eyes, was very bad. Not so much for the adults, who weren’t in the film so much, but the two main child actors. Not a single line seemed to be delivered well and the conversations they had made it seem as if they were acting, as opposed to just having an awkward conversation.

I really feel for what this film was going for, I do, but it just didn’t deliver what it set out to do. The people who seem to be the biggest fans of this film appear to be the people who read the book the film is based on. They know more about the events of the film because the book explains a lot more about it. But as someone who knew nothing about the story from before I felt a lot was not explained. A lot seems to be implied, but it is never really shown long enough for you to make sense of it in your head and the film relies too much on interpretation.

I wouldn’t say this film isn’t recommended. Enough people seem fond of it and 98% of critics seem to say it’s a good film so maybe you should check it out. But for me was extremely lacking in most of the things that makes a good film (such as plot), and so I refuse to say that I like Let The Right One In, despite it attaining visual excellence.

Final Verdict: 4/10