The Big Picture
- Romances in horror films are often doomed, with one or both partners facing death or betrayal.
- While some supernatural romances blur the lines between genres, they are not considered horror movies.
- Let The Right One In is an exceptional horror film that explores a pure and protective romance between two young outcasts.
Romances in horror films don't tend to work out, do they? No matter how the relationship starts, the end is rarely happily ever after. One or both could die, like in Cronenberg's The Fly or Eden Lake. Maybe one half of the relationship is not as wholesome as they seem, turning on the other, like Ready or Not, or Bram Stoker's Dracula. We all love a good monster romance — at least I know I do — but when filmmakers go all the way in on it, it becomes easy for an audience to question if the film they're watching counts as a horror movie. The warm and fuzzies of a healthy onscreen romance are almost the antithesis of the shivers down the spine that can come from a horror film, feelings of sincerity and bliss versus feelings of dread and tension.
Warm Bodies is an incredibly underrated zombie romance, Only Lovers Left Alive is one of the best vampire films with a profound and loving relationship, Bones and All is a story of smitten young cannibals, The Shape of Water is Guillermo Del Toro's award-winning beauty and beast tale. None of these are considered horror movies, though; they're supernatural, or dark fantasy romances. A lot of more family-oriented films of this ilk have strong love stories in them like The Corpse Bride, The Addams Family, and Hotel Transylvania. The lines between genres blur in romantic horror films. While arguments about a film's genre usually go the same route as the one about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie — tiring, at best — it can shrink the pool of contestants for best horror movie couple.
'Bones and All' & 9 Other Romantic Horror Movies That Will Have Your Heart Racing
As the Queen song goes, Love Kills.There are contestants, though few, for best horror movie couple. Tiffany and Chucky of the Child's Play franchise are iconic, sure, but not exactly the picture of marital bliss, the Warrens of The Conjuring franchise are real, actual people, so it feels weird to say they're a great fictional couple. Vampires seem to have the best luck romantically. The crossover into romance for them is easy, think of all the vampire media that are romances between a human and a bloodsucking creature of the night. The more humanoid appearance and symbolism of the vampire can more easily veer into the romantic and even the erotic, which gives us films like The Hunger, ones already mentioned like Only Lovers Left Alive, and my pick for the best couple in all horror cinema: Let The Right One In.
Let The Right One In is a 2008 Swedish horror film adapted from John Ajvide Lindqvist's 2004 novel. Directed by Tomas Alfredson, it is one of the most beautiful horror films ever made, and absolutely the best 2000s horror has to offer. The film takes us to the dreary, snow-covered town of Blackeberg in the early 1980s, where we meet Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant), a lonely, outcast boy with dark fantasies of taking revenge on the bullies who constantly, and violently, harass him. Moving in next door to him is Eli (Lina Leandersson), an equally strange girl who appears to be his age, and her guardian Håkan (Per Ragnar). Despite Eli's initial hesitation, she and Oskar eventually form a friendship, which eventually turns into a romance.
'Let the Right One In' Is the Classic Story Of Boy Meets Girl, Girl Is Vampire
Eli, we quickly discover, is a vampire who has been 12 years old for nigh on centuries with a constant need to feed on human blood. She sends Håkan to do the dirty work, but when that fails she takes matters into her own hands, hunting and killing like a wild animal, impervious to the cold and frost. However, what should be a hindrance to her relationship with Oskar almost fuels it, as he's a little bit disturbed himself, being very young, lonely, and hurting by the neglect of his family and the relentless bullying he receives from boys at school. He's a kid that a lot of people who have been antagonized regularly can relate to, someone without the actual capacity to commit an act of violence, who is good innately and doesn't necessarily want to harm anyone, but he thinks about taking revenge often as if it were an escapist fantasy. Whereas Eli is someone who, given her vampirism, has to kill, or at the very least hurt and even infect, to survive, she had to get used to the idea of committing or benefiting from direct acts of violence fast. But as much as the two yearn for, or need, violence, they also both have a deep desire for a real connection and an end to their isolation.
A lot of vampire romance is about indulging in dark fantasies, whether the storytellers are arguing for or against the idea, and Oskar does get to indulge a bit in that yearning for violence when he's with Eli. But what makes Let The Right One In truly special is that, at their very core, Oskar and Eli are just a couple of weird little kids. They communicate in Morse code through their adjoining wall, they play with a Rubik's Cube because it's the 1980s, and most importantly, especially considering one needs to drink blood for sustenance, their intentions are incredibly pure. Looking at the title of the film itself, Let The Right One In not only harkens to a piece of folklore that makes an appearance in this movie — the idea that a vampire must be invited into a room — but also reflects the relationship that builds between Eli and Oskar, with her opening up to him and letting him in on her true nature, and Oskar allowing Eli into his life, and stepping into her world without regret.
It's incredibly chaste as far as romantic horror goes, being almost slightly different from the friendship the children share, but it's no less true. The foundation of Oskar and Eli's relationship is their need, and their desire, to protect each other and keep each other safe from harm. Both of them do so in the third act of the film, with Eli's protection of Oskar at the end being one of the most well-known and best scenes in the film. It's this innocent idea of really liking someone, desiring to look after them, made complex by Eli's nature as a vampire. This is what makes the couple work... Or does it?
Do Eli and Oskar Live Happily Ever After?
In the end, Eli and Oskar run away together, with Oskar taking the mantle as Eli's protector after Håkan dies. You see them tapping out the word kiss to each other in Morse code, and you think "Isn't that cute?" And then you go home, and you think about that ending. The book, and its eventual sequel titled Let The Old Dreams Die, is much more clear about both the relationships Eli has with Håkan and Oskar, and the fates of Eli and Oskar, while the film is more vague and more open to interpretation.
You start to think about how Oskar is still mortal by the end of the film, and that, if not turned, one day he'll grow old while Eli remains in a childlike form. You think back to Håkan and wonder if the pact he has with Eli started the same way and if Oskar will truly take his place, and become her thrall as he did. The English-language remake of the film, titled Let Me In, actually solidifies that implication, with the stand-in for Håkan also meeting Eli, named Abby, when he was a child.
Perhaps it is better, then, that the film ends where it does. And trust that Let The Old Dreams Die, where Oskar is actually turned and remains forever young with Eli, is what awaits afterward. Because as couples in horror films go, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better example than Eli and Oskar. It's so rare to see a romance like this in a film where the murders that can range from bleak to beautiful are still incredibly present, two little weirdos who break each other's isolation, form a relationship on a mutual understanding, and risk themselves to protect each other while still surviving to the end, and even happily ever after.
