8 More Movie Plot Twists So Subtle You Totally Missed Them
1. Oskar Is Doomed To A Terrible Fate - Let The Right One In
The Movie
Tomas Alfredson's masterful Swedish horror classic, following the friendship and burgeoning romance between an outcast 12-year-old boy, Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant), and an adrogynous vampire child, Eli (Lina Leandersson).
Between this and Matt Reeves' surprisingly great 2010 remake, there's no reason not to see it.
The Twist You Didn't Notice
The film ends with Oskar almost being drowned in a swimming pool by bullies, before Eli arrives and murders the majority of their number in a stunningly executed sequence.
The final scene sees Oskar onboard a train with a person-sized box accompanying him, within which Eli resides. Eli then taps the word "kiss" to Oskar in morse code, to which he taps "small kiss" back, and we cut to black.
Though a generous and optimistic reading of the film appears to suggest a happy ending for Oskar and Eli, if you've really been paying attention to the movie, that's not at all the fate awaiting Oskar.
The overt implication is that Eli is effectively grooming Oskar to become her new "handler", to seek out victims for her to feast on until he's an old man, just as Hakan (Per Ragnar) did before his death. The remake, Let Me In, more implicitly suggests that the caretaker character grew up with the vampire as a child before transitioning into that role.
And while it seems that Eli does truly care for Oskar, Oskar's still going to be used, coaxed into murdering people and likely end up suffering a grim fate due to his infautation with Eli.
Though the novel's author John Ajvide Lindqvist did in fact write a short story where Eli turns Oskar into a vampire and their relationship isn't at all predatory, his film script deviates enough from his novel that this doesn't need to be taken at face value.
After all, Lindqvist's book depicted Hakan as a pedophile exploited by Eli, a subplot completely stripped away from the film.
Put your romantic tendencies aside and the truth is plainly clear - Oskar had a whole lot of murder, anguish and confused feelings ahead of him.