"Like the best sci-fi, it works as a parable for our own fears of abandonment, isolation and ill-prepared authority - along with our innate ability to destroy ourselves better than any external force ever could." (Jake Rossen, Wizard: The Magazine of Comics, Entertainment and Pop Culture, June 2009)
Let the Right One In (four stars total) At some point between childhood and adulthood, we stop asking the question "why?" Is it arrogance that we think we know everything or laziness that we think we know enough? Either way, someone else will occasionally come along with an answer to a question that we had never thought to ask, and we may kick ourselves saying, "Why didn't I think of that?" followed by "it's so obvious - so simple." In fiction it happens all the time, and we shouldn't kick ourselves because we were probably busy thinking about bills, or lack of sleep, or what to eat instead. One possible definition for creative writing could be brainstorming plus paper plus time. Let the Right One In offers some fresh answers to some very fictitious whys. None of these answers may help you pay bills, or sleep better, or whet your appetite, but their ingenuity may distract you long enough to ask, "what else don't I know?"Before I come back to the first quote above (I do recommend reading The Washington Times movie review), I want to tie in the second quote. I'm not a huge Stephen King fan, I've only read his Night Shift (1978) short story collection and autobiographical On Writing (2000), but one thing I love in his work is that the supernatural element is the MacGuffin (a plot element that catches the viewers' attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction) to real man-made horrors. When I watched both movie versions of 'Salem's Lot, I asked myself what was in it for Mr. Straker to be the vampire's familiar. It can't just be protection, because the master ends up killing his servant anyway. Let the Right One In answers that question, and does so without involving sexuality (that's the last thing vampire fiction needs more of). A vampire can literally turn anyone into a familiar or treat anyone like food, so what elevates a familiar above the food? And what can we learn from that about our own human relationships?
Birds of a feather flock together. Wouldn't a vampire feel more comfortable spending serious time with a fellow killer, human or not? Is there a difference between being a "killer" and being someone who has killed? Hopefully nobody ever has to answer these questions from personal experience. Mind you, we're talking about a fictional horror movie, but while we're on the subject, what other questions does Let the Right One In answer? Have you ever stopped to ask what would happen if a vampire did attempt to force entry into a place they haven't been invited? Neither have I, but the movie's gruesome answer is so much more meaningful than "they just can't - there's like an invisible barrier" or something similarly lame. Also, as much as I like Bela Lugosi's famous Dracula line, "I don't drink . . . wine," I was much more interested to see what would happen if a vampire did try to ingest food, and why they would even try. Let me just wrap this up by saying that humanity and vulnerability work just as well for vampires, with or without reproductive organs.
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