They’re like us, just not quite. Vampires are perfect for manifesting our fears about our fellow humans and ourselves because they don’t just kill; they corrupt. And unlike zombies or werewolves, they don’t so much maul their victims as they seduce them. Perhaps unavoidably, bloodsucking love stories are a hallmark of the horror genre, sometimes grim and affecting, sometimes embarrassingly rote. Let the Right One In, the acclaimed vampire film from Sweden, falls happily into the former category, but don’t mistake it for being instantly or even easily embraceable. Director Tomas Alfredson has crafted a beautiful and atmospheric film, rife with haunting, wintry imagery and fine performances from his stars. But as enjoyable as it is, as compelling as it is, it’s a gnarly picture and a troubling one, where questions are left unanswered and the viewer is left uneasy. I have the sense that this is the type of film that one returns to, one that will seem to shift and change with each viewing the way the central vampire character’s voice and facial features subtly morph at key moments in the film. (Trick of the light? I wondered at such moments, caught somewhere between the urge to lean in closer and the impulse to recoil.)
As others have observed, Let the Right One In melds horror with the conventions of coming-of-age stories and pangs of youthful romance. Nothing new, that; but Let the Right One In is wonderfully worrying because it doesn’t attempt to deny the horrors perpetrated by its unavoidably parasitic vampire figure. It doesn’t layer on pretty gothic trappings, nor does it work to smooth the way for its star-crossed lovers by offering (as one of my favorite films, Near Dark, unabashedly does) an attainable, happy late-inning solution. It allows us, to the very last, to doubt. This is a story that could have gone on long after the film wraps up, a story that does go on in one’s mind long after the theater lights have come up and everyone’s gone home.
The story begins with Oskar, a picked-on twelve-year-old who hums as he assembles a scrapbook collection of newspaper clippings detailing grim killings. He’s lonely and unhappy until the night he meets Eli, a mysterious figure who he takes to be a girl his own age. Alfredson trusts us to know better; Eli’s first appearance – perched on a jungle gym in a way that’s just odd and precarious enough to convey a certain otherworldliness – is strange and striking, balancing innocence and menace. It’s quite the image, and actress Lina Leandersson keeps us off-balance as Eli, invoking contradictory qualities throughout her excellent performance. Leandersson can play the predator as well as the nervous adolescent, and her contribution to the film is immeasurable.
Just as vital is young actor Kåre Hedebrant, who plays Oskar with a similarly engaging mixture of winning guilelessness and burgeoning disturbance. It’s in seeing Eli through Oskar’s eyes that we grow sympathetic to the vampire’s plight (I can’t forget the sweetly smitten look that spreads across Oskar’s face following some early interactions with Eli involving a Rubik’s cube.). and his acceptance of a creature of the night into his life carries something admirable in it, as dubious as that may sound outside of the context of the film.
Consider Oskar’s handling of Eli’s ambiguous gender, an element that screenwriter John Ajvide Lindqvist has quietly held over in adapting his own novel. (The underplayed implication is that Eli is a castrated boy.) One of the most striking developments in the story is how unconcerned Oskar is with which body parts Eli has, or has had, or has forcibly removed from someone else. Oskar is simply in love, and his shrugging devotion is endearing, if also pretty unsettling when it comes to that whole draining-humans-of their blood aspect of Eli’s life. (Is pairing gender ambiguity with genuine monstrosity potentially problematic? Yeah. But Lindqvist treats Eli’s gender as something of an incidental. Plus, the macho, more traditionally masculine bullies who torment Oskar ultimately come across as the story’s most sadistic characters.)
Alfredson and Lindqvist have fashioned a marvelous love story here because it does not deny how damaging love can be. New York Times critic Manohla Dargis has lengthily discussed the relationship of the film’s English language title to Morrissey’s song “Let the Right One Slip In,” and the film pulses and sparkles with the wry humor and pointed sadness of your favorite Smiths song. The title also aptly refers to the vampire’s traditional inability to enter a room without being invited, which becomes a metaphor for that most anxious aspect of human relationships—deciding who to let into to your heart. What could be more terrifying than that? Mixing tenderness with savagery, Let the Right One In gains great power from its refusal to soothe our fears.
Victoria Large / © 2008 notcoming.com
Another connection between The Smiths and this movie: wildly overrated.
“Another connection between The Smiths and this movie: wildly overrated.”
I see what you did there.
But no, this movie deserves the praise it has got, it’s a well told story, quite and simple.
Overrated? Hardly. While this is not the best film I’ve seen all year (that honor belongs to Pixar’s WALL-E) it is by far an amazing film that deserves as much or more praise that it is getting. It’s funny how anonymity affects people on the internet. I’m betting “Tom” is a shy nerd who wouldn’t speak up for his life in the real world, yet on the interwebz it’s a-okay to whine all day long.
Ha! ‘Tom’ is an ex-notcoming employee and paid film critic who no one has EVER accused of being shy (the nerd thing notwithstanding). Though I admit my overrated claim deserves some backup.
I just don’t see where all the praise for ‘Let the Right One In’ is coming from. It’s a decent little horror movie, but not much more. The story is rambling and extremely predictable, the characters fairly thin and there’s no real sense of suspense. It’s beautiful to look at, I’ll grant, and there are some interesting ideas in there. I certainly wouldn’t dissuade anyone from seeing it, I just don’t get what all the fuss is about.
I totally agree with your praise of ‘Wall-e’ by the way. But you should maybe think twice before slinging personal insults around. It’s neither big nor clever.
(I knew that was coming.)
I’m with you Tom! (Well, except for your comment about The Smiths.) I found the pacing to be absolutely glacial and mixing of genres (coming of age, horror, romance, etc) to be ineffective. Not an awful film by any means but I really don’t see what the fuss is all about.
That’s funny Matt. I too thought this was the film of the year for me until seeing Wall-E a week later. It gets the slight edge even though this was the masterpiece it is being hailed as.
As for the negative comments. I can see how some might not like the mixing of genres and, more specifically, how they handled it. There were scenes in the film that I initially thought to myself should have had a buffer in between but the more I retraced my steps felt had it right all along. I found myself consistently off balance and some of it had to do with those surrounding me. I’m American and didn’t find laughs where many of my fellow movie-goers (presumably also Americans) did. It did make me wonder if there were as many laughs in the film’s homeland. To me the conclusion to the extreme tension near the film’s end was jaw-dropping. Visually it was handled remarkably well as it took me a moment to comprehend what I was seeing. Other’s laughed !?!?!
I think the bottom line with this one is probably your fundamental stance on what makes a good horror flick. I don’t find super slick looking films filled with pop star looking 20 something teens running around in designer clothes (insert every once scary, worthwhile genre remake example here) at all scary and this lo-fi mood piece was the break from that I had been longing for.
p.s. not a Smiths fan
Victoria, thanks for writing such a thoughtful review. Your review helps me understand why so many people are praising this movie unconditionally. I for one had very mixed feelings when I left the theater. The visuals are more than just interesting: they’re beautiful and highly inventive. Every scene is meticulously framed and shot; the color is beautiful and very appealing; and the director found effective and novel ways to recast some of the most threadbare horror imagery. But I found the script to be unsatisfying. It was relatively novel to meld a fairly typical vampire love story with a standard nerd-revenge fantasy. But using a vampire love story as a metaphor for human relationships is simply hackneyed, and making the central characters younger than usual doesn’t change that. I also thought that the visuals really carried the film through some long stretches where the characters were a bit underdeveloped and their behavior was under-motivated. And I agree that it was a very bold storytelling choice to let the movie end in an unsettling way, without backing away from the consequences of Oskar and Eli’s relationship. But I didn’t really think this was a positive quality. I think the film’s climax (while brilliantly filmed) was innately ugly and unsatisfying. Also, the set-up to the climax was very poorly plotted. It left me feeling that the coming-of-age aspect of the film was ultimately a crass and hopeless revenge fantasy, lacking any real insight into adolescent turmoil.
Overtaed plain and simple!!
Overrated.
Directed by
Tomas Alfredson
Source
Magnet Releasing 35mm print
Posted on
13 November 2008
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tom
13 November 2008
11:19 AM