"Let the Right One In"

I’m writing this in order to work out why the film, Let the Right One In, has affected me so much. I kinda/sorta watched it a few years ago, but not really. I didn’t really pay attention to it, I think I may have been put off by the subtitles. But I watched it a few nights ago, really watched it, and was, quite literally, moved to tears. I was so affected I read everything I could find about the movie on Wikipedia, ordered the book on Amazon, and then watched the American remake, Let Me In, on the same night. I was up until the early morning hours just thinking about it. I watched it again for a second time in three nights, and, again, I was up till the wee hours just thinking about it. I had not experienced such feelings from a movie in a very long time. What is it about this story that so touched me that I’m completely obsessed with it? I think it's that the movie, and then the book, (that’s the order I experienced) is just such a wonderfully told love story. Initially, the story doesn’t really break any new ground. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Phantom of the Opera, among others, are love stories featuring unlovable characters. I think the uniqueness of this story comes from the youth and innocence of both the characters, and that’s what was able to give hope to the hardened piece of black coal that my own heart has become. If my own life were to be made into a movie, the theme song would be “Unlovable” by The Smiths (“I know I’m unlovable, you don’t have to tell me…”). I don’t say this to get sympathy, only to explain the reasons this film had such an emotional impact on me. Anyhoo, where was I? Oh yeah… the innocence of both characters. This story could have easily gotten lost in the long list of other love stories with unlovable characters, but for that innocence. Lindqvist’s stroke of genius came in having Eli be just as young emotionally as Oskar. Elias could have been the old, world-weary vampire, falling in love again with someone young, perhaps for the hundredth time, as with Armand and Louis in “Interview with the Vampire,” or even Stephan (and Damon) and Elena in “The Vampire Diaries,” but thanks to the horrible castration suffered by Elias, Eli is frozen in an androgynous, forever prepubescent innocence. That’s what makes the story work. It’s what allows the viewer/reader to really empathize with the characters, but especially Eli, on a deeper level. Yes, Eli is a vampire, a killer, who feeds off the living, the epitome of something unlovable (right?), but it’s the emotional innocence that keeps her from succumbing to the usual vampire tropes of the demon enjoying the thrill of the hunt or the kill. This old vampire with a very young soul and an emotionally scarred and physically abused boy just wanting to be loved for themselves. That Oskar, even after he learns that Eli is “not a girl,” loves Eli anyway. The book deals with Oskar’s fear of being perceived as gay very quickly, in just a few sentences actually, but Oskar makes his decision to love Elias anyway, for who he/she is. It’s a very moving and hopeful idea to a broken old man.