Lat den ratte komma in / Let The Right One In (Swedish Vampire Film)

There's been loads of buzz about this film on the festival circuit recently and I got to see it yesterday. My fairly high expectations were hugely exceeded; it's fantastic. Anyone else seen this?

I saw the trailer, first groaning about another human/vampire bonding story (True Blood and the awful-looking Twilight being the other current fare), but by the end I was intrigued. Reviews have made me very excited indeed.

terrific movie.

Honestly, this was *such* a treat and about the only film I've seen this year that has exceeded the hype. Amazing central performances from the two young actors, by turns sweet, creepy and bloody and a finale which took my breath away.

Plus, the rules of vampirism are integral to the story, but don't feel tacked on or cheesy in a realistic setting. Without getting into spoilers there's an element of a vampire's power which is used to play with the viewer and as the credits rolled I realised that I'd been totally bamboozled by this. I felt stupid but very happy.

not sure what you're talking about?

******serious spoilers********

The final scene on the train could be seen as Eli and Oskar escaping to make a life together, but the other interpretation is that Oskar has basically been glamoured/bewitched by Eli (as vampires are able to) and has a life of serving her needs in store, like Hakan did previously. It struck me that the way the film makes the viewer feel empathy, tenderness and concern for Eli is making us feel like Oskar does, and we're entranced by her in the same way, ignoring her murderous traits. Also, there are several shots throughout the film where her (I think cgi enhanced) eyes are the focus and thinking back this felt like the hypnotic gaze. Might just be my interpretation though!

*******no more spoilers********

SPOILERS

ya i pretty much got that... my feeling was that he was basically a young version of the old dude she arrives with at the beginning and his fate is basically to become him. i didn't necessarily think she'd bewitched him though (and i think it kinda makes the story weaker and less poignant if she did)

SPOIOLERSDKSLDK

I suppose part of what I liked so much about this as well was that there's loads of it that is open to interpretation and reflection. That and the way the finale plays out, which frankly was absolutely fucking incredible and has to go into the all-time top 10 horror movie moments for me. I'm really hoping it gets a proper release in the UK so that I can see it again on a BIG screen.

i agree this was completely awesome and would highly recommend it. i'll write more later.

yeah this was awesome

Just saw this last night, in fact. Very good. I went in expecting a conventional horror film but it was perhaps more effective that it was not. I also agree w/Slocki's interpretation.

yeah i agree. i'd prefer to think that it was just abt 2 lonely ppl rather than just some sort of vampire hypnosis

A little nugget from the internet reveals that the morse tapped out on the box in the final scene is Swedish for "little kiss". So cool, hopefully the dvd will have director's commentary etc.

seeing tonight. Didn't recognize Morrissey title.

Great film, the book is also excellent - looking forward to reading the rest of the author's work as it's translated.

It had its moments (cat attack) and was stylishly executed. It was also basically a lugubrious Afterschool Special for goth kids.

i think she was glamouring him to a certain extent but it wears off as the film goes on. the scene where he sees her castration scar shows him what "she" really is and he is fine with that in the end because she has proven that she cares for him.

Neither I nor the three other people I saw this with knew what that scar was meant to indicate. I guess it was telegraphed by the way she kept saying "what if I wasn't a girl?" -- but I guess I just thought she meant a normal, human, living girl.

Yeah, I thought that too at first. I guess it doesn't matter much since the film mainly offers the shot of the castration scar and it only does so very quickly. I guess the book gets much deeper into this backstory.

Neither I nor the three other people I saw this with knew what that scar was meant to indicate. I guess it was telegraphed by the way she kept saying "what if I wasn't a girl?" -- but I guess I just thought she meant a normal, human, living girl.

Same here. Was kind of baffled by that shot until I read this interview with the director. (Apparently the actress's voice was even overdubbed to make it sound less feminine.)

this was really good. cute story.

what was going on with oskar's dad and beardy creep?

gay?

yeah i didnt get that scene either. at first i thought he was gay but then he just got really depressed when the bearded dude turned up?

or alcoholic?

probably both. i just read it as showing that the dad had someone (or something) else in his life who he cared about and it took away from the limited time he had with oskar.

This was pretty good. Destined to be overvalued for underperforming, maybe, and never once very scary ... but I appreciate it freezing up the vampire genre.

should i see this or twilight

Haven't seen the latter and probably never will, so I guess I recommend this one.

Not read this whole thread b/c of spoilers, so someone have pity, please: is this still showing anywhere in NYC??

It's at the Angelika.

v4h1d, see this

or alcoholic?

i looked this up on imdb and i think they were saying that the book draws this out a little more, but yeah his dad is a recovering/relapsed alky and this guy is a trigger, which the son recognizes.

def got some molesty vibes from him tho

Oh man it kills me living in a town that won't show this. I guess I'll just have to watch...Bolt.

and never once very scary

No way! Every time she barked like a dog and jumped or clamped onto someone and they did that sped-up crazy movement on her, I found myself both frightened and revolted.

I thought because of you people who said the ending made you happy, that I could look forward to some kind of redemption...but no!!! Eli taking Oskar away to be exactly like the old guy who died for her, that is not redemptive to me at all. Eli is a canker, a leeching, consuming canker, and her story is tragic and not her fault but still, that's the tension, right? Between her animal desire to LIVE and the horror that makes it possible. The woman who self-combusts, she's the other choice; the rational, human choice.

this was super fuckin good

This just came to my local theater. I have plans to see it Sunday or Monday night. Thanks to ILX, I am excited.

saw this tonight, liked it a lot. the filmmaking was imaginatively low-key (big scene at the end is the obvious example, but all the way through the choice of what's shown and how, plus really terrific sound design -- a lot of the movie happens on the soundtrack). kids were great. i didn't read the ending as exactly deterministic. obviously oskar could end up like the previous keeper, but i don't think the movie is cynical about eli's affection for him.

anyway after watching 30 days of night and i am legend last month i was bitching about how there were no new angles left in vampire movies, so it's nice to be proven wrong.

found a good post about it on another forum (SPOILERS etc):

i know in the book they discuss Eli’s gender in a bit more depth. The Castration was a part of becoming a Vampire. In the past Eli was tortured as a part of some sort of ritual. But Eli was very much a boy. That said, as he/she was only 12 at the i’d guess puberty hadn’t set in fully, and im sure it’s easier to get people to do things for you as a lil girl than a boy.
Another point that is far more explicit in the book is that Eli’s old handler or watcher is a pedophile.
you can sort of see this in the film with the moments of almost disgust Eli show her handler.
in terms of Eli’s outward gender choices, i wondered is Eli changes her appearance depending on who her handler is. We never really know how old Eli is , just that she has “been 12 for a very long time.” So i’d say it’s fair to imagine she has had several handlers. Could it be that if they have been in the past someone like the old man, a pedophile that also has to live outside normal society, then Eli would present as a boy or a girl depending on her handlers taste as a way of keeping them?
With Oskar, Eli sees a replacement, so yes there is a lot of manipulation in her treatment of him. In an odd way Eli’s behaviour towards Oskar is almost that of a predatory adult grooming a young child. You take someone weak, alone, maybe with a broken family etc and make them feel strong and special when they are with you. You cut them off from their traditional support network. but at the same time there appears to be something pure and honest in Eli’s treatment of Oskar.
In Oskar she has found someone that accepts Eli as Eli. Not a boy or a girl or a monster, not a perverse way to fulfill aberrant sexual desire, just someone to hold and love. At the same time Eli needs a new handler and cant have that person be someone too weak to look after Eli in the daylight.
I think Eli is almost beyond thinking about things in terms of good or evil. She is so old and been around for so long that she sees nothing wrong with genuinely loving Oskar while knowingly using and manipulating him for her own ends. She is able to accept the dual nature of her relationship without any internal conflict. That makes her less (or more ?) than human in away as it is (IMO) almost psychotic behaviour, but then again, Eli isn’t human anymore.

this was really good.

this didn't make a lick of sense. thumbs down from me.

you really thought it didn't make any sense? i thought it was pretty damn straightforward.

Enjoyed this.

Loved this.
Scene w/Eli climbing up the side of the hospital got big laughs in the showing I saw.
Pool scene was so well done.

Pool scene was so well done.

Ditto ditto ditto. Loved this. Didn't get the castration scar until the internet explained it, though. I was more, "Woah, you'd be crucified for showing underage genitals in an Australian movie."

Writer Lindqvist's zombie novel "Handling the Undead" comes out in English next month.

No one I know got the castration thing.

I read ILX first, so I did...still didn't "get" it, though, it would require actual explanation.

I found this an interesting but surprisingly unpleasant movie. Oskar was fantastic, reminded me of kids I knew. Pool scene was great, as were all the scenes around the woman Eli bit.

i don't mean to slight it, it really does hold its spooky mood very very well.

yeah i'm not gonna let you put me off this no matter how hard you're trying.

'unproblematic "hit back, really hard" revenge fulfillment fantasy.'

Without spoiling the resolution, it's hard to see how the main character's situation at the end of the film as unproblematic. Look at what happened to the last guy.

The book kinda resolves that ambiguity though, arguably.

xpost exactly.

Man, I love that movie. After I saw it, I kept telling everyone to see it. Finally my friend mentioned she'd rent it. Hmm, should ask her if she finally did. Awesome awesome movie. I really have to read the book!

i hated this. it made no sense at all, to me.

Just re-watched it with a friend - he loved the film but read somewhere that the English subtitles on the English version are different from those on the US version? "Subtle, but make a difference" he says.

Not sure how the movie can make no sense at all. The first time I watched it I was trying to figure out a bit what was going on for the first half hour or so, this time round it was pretty straightforward.

The english overdub version is awful.

Yeah the English subtitles were inexplicably changed for the US DVD release. The company releasing the DVD got so many complaints that they put back in the theatrical subtitles for all subsequent pressings of the DVD. However, a lot of the copies in stores are still the ones without the proper theatrical subtitles.

i hated this. it made no sense at all, to me.

It's about a boy (or girl! WHO KNOWS!) who likes to suck blooooooood.

Thank god for the English overdub, or else I would never have seen this film, which I watched during Thursday's blizzard and I thoroughly enjoyed.

Felt that they should have done the proposed flashback scene ("be me a little") though, because the castration scar scene seemed so random. We really didn't know what to make of it.

Do people in Sweden really tuck in their sweaters? Same planet, different worlds, I guess.

Thank god for the English overdub, or else I would never have seen this film

Wait, really?

haven't seen this but the title kinda reads like some obscure patois

or swedish, even, yes

X-post Not if you're a Morrissey fan. Like the author.

The alternative title was The Girl Least Likely To.

Wait, really?

Well, not necessarily "never". But the lack of a dub track tends to negatively influence whether I'll buy a film.

We accidentally bought Pan's Labyrinth a couple weeks ago, and only found out that it had no dub when we put it in the DVD player. It seemed like a pretty successful and critically lauded film, but they couldn't afford to do a dub track?

Does the dub correspond to the famously bad subtitles?

kingkongodzilla I had the exact same thought about the dad's sweater!! it was the most bizarre thing in the movie

Just asked my Swedish g/f about the sweater thing and she said "nobody does that" and I said "but what about the dad in LDRKI?" and she said "well that was the 70s, and he was gay"

She tucks her pants into her socks tho, so...

the dad was only gay according to American misreadings of that scene. he was a recovering alcoholic, and the neighbor was his drinking buddy. hence Oskar's look of dismay when he came to visit.

I think you misread my post. My Swedish g/f thought he was gay. It may be a misreading of the scene, but no need to blame a nationality.

HAHa

would rather watch twilight than sit through this again

Hearing okay things about the remake in that it doesn't dumb it down, but I also get the impression that if you've seen the Swedish one, why bother? Just glad they didn't "do a Vanishing", if you will.

The ad makes it look like they _drastically_ dumbed it down but i imagine i'll give this a try when it's on video.

it's fine, they didnt dumb it down really, but at the same time, what's the point

will probably see this because i like the new kids and i want to see the original again so maybe this will be enough

What I've seen from the trailer its practically a shot for shot remake, and while the young male lead (Oskar) is remarkably good, but I didn't buy (from brief exposure) that the vampire lead (Eli) was a old soul. The actress is just not selling the same nauseous disdain for life. The clean, optimistic architecture of 1970s Stockholm also has a huge edge over nondescript vacation ski resort in the remake.

Again hard to judge from the trailer, but I already made all of my friends/relatives see Låt den rätte komma in in the theatrical subtitles version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reRRAEVHq8E

Nah, it looks far less dour and bleak than the original, not feeling it. I don't entirely see the financial sense in remaking it - it still seems to be aiming for the arthouse horror crowd, who would mostly be perfectly willing to watch the original, if they haven't already.

dont judge a movie by its trailer imo

Ahhh, spoilsport. Not even a little bit?

It's already got nine extremely positive reviews from people familiar with the original

This might be one of the few times I hope the remake is schlockier and looser than the original.

I generally support remaking dull films, so...

i'd be amazed if it were worse that the orig.

About as good as the original, with some scene stagings more impressive (tense rollover wreck shot from inside) and others worse (the pool scene, unfor).

Won't win any fans among those in this thread who couldn't stand orig's magisterial sad-sackery, but the reward is that an American movie deals with preteen sexuality (and sexual ambiguity) in a way that subtitles can't help audiences here feel less uncomfortable about. Lotta nervous tittering in my audience.

saw the original (although I had to do it in three sittings due to extreme fatigue), quite enjoyed it.

Armond White has panned the remake, so that's the final endorsement I needed to go see it.

loved the remake. much of it was faithful, but had enough flourishes to keep it as its own entity. I liked the pool scene, and how they didn't show Abby's face when he looked up at her. And the nice added on ending.

The opening made me really edgy though, as the corny speeding ambulance opening and "are you leading a cult?" dialogue made me fear it was going to go way OTT, but it never even came close to doing that, so good stuff.

Aside from the pool scene -- I liked the Swedish lo-fi climax -- the remake is significantly better! US kid actors being the best in the world is part of it, I think.

I've come around to the idea over the last few weeks that I'll probably see the remake.

what helps is that after a year-plus, I remembered about 4 scenes from the original...

remake a rare instance where an American version is more bleak than the European original.

also think i should just give up and embrace the TEAL AND ORANGE TEAL AND ORANGE

glad some people agree here, i saw the remake first then the original this week, thought the remake was better, and definitely darker and more bleak. plus the love story in the remake was really really powerful for me, like more real and affecting than most love stories in many more conventional films.

the american version took everything wrong with the original and got rid of it. No CGI cats, 12-year-old v, the boy wasn't complicit in the cops murder, pool scene played as less of a revenge fantasy. + Elias Koteas and Richard Jenkins. basically How To Remake 101.

cool; didn't watch the remake yet but now I will.

just saw this, very affecting and disturbing. I didn't quite "get" the castration thing but I did sort of think there might be something like that there -- I did catch what looked like it might have been a scar in *that* scene, and there was the fact that s/he kept repeating "I'm not a girl", which I thought had to be hinting at something more than just "I'm a vampire" unless there was a translation issue. In re the dad being or not being gay, I did momentarily think "oh, the dad's boyfriend showed up," but then the way the scene progressed I figured it was just his enabling drinking buddy.

Definitely a lot goig on with gender and homosexuality-related themes in any case, and I thought it was interesting that the bully has a sort of feminine face and that there was something vaguely sexual about the way he glares at the main character. I don't know if I buy the 1:1 (i.e. everything matching up perfectly, fantasy to reality) pedophile allegory above, but I do think some elements of that stuff are present.

lo those heady days of 2008. i went to see this with beloved ilxor j3ss3. i think i won a ticket! beautiful snow.

let the ratte komma in