Let the Right One In (2008)

A poetic tale of young love and revenge and the cruelty of children and the many strange possibilities that life affords, and also vampires. 9/10

It’s films like Let the Right One In that bring into focus the often conflicted ways in which the phrase “best movie of the year” can be used. It’s certainly my favourite film I’ve seen this year so far (even moreso than Slumdog Millionaire, which I gave a higher rating), but I don’t know if it’s the best. And I don’t know if it’s the favourite out of the films that came out within the year as considered during award season; The Dark Knight and Wall-E were pretty tremendous, after all.

Nevertheless, it’s 2009, now, and Let the Right One In is the one to beat. This may come as a surprise; it’s more than likely that you haven’t seen it, and equally likely that you haven’t even heard of it. Fair enough! It’s a subtitled film from Sweden (properly Låt den rätte komma in) currently enjoying a very limited release. It’s directed by a guy you never heard of, starring two children you never heard of, in a screenplay adapted from a novel you’ve probably never read. And yet: here it is, more or less a masterpiece of its kind.

Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is a weird little boy. With his limp mane of ash-blonde hair, his alabaster skin and his morbid interests (he keeps a scrapbook of newspaper articles about especially gruesome murders, for example), the off-putting twelve-year-old is hated by his peers and pitied by grown-ups. He comes from a broken home: his mother works long hours, and cannot be with him as much as she would like; his father is an alcoholic who apparently left them for another man.  UPDATE: Some readers in the comments below suggest that there really is no homosexual subtext to Oskar’s father’s relationship with his friend, and that the weird awkwardness of their encounter at one point is meant only to suggest that they want Oskar to leave so that they can drink, and nothing more.  I’ve seen this insisted upon in other quarters as well, so it would seem to be the case.  Chalk it up to different cultural perceptions of suggestiveness, I guess.

All in all, things are not very well with Oskar, though he seems content to imagine absurd revenge fantasies against nobody in particular without ever acting on them.

All of this changes with the arrival of Eli (Lina Leandersson), the new girl next door. She’s as weird as he is, but every bit as confident as he is meek. She’s resistant when it comes to making friends, moves with disconcerting speed and silence, and has a remarkable faculty for puzzle-solving. And she only comes out after dark.

She is, indeed, a vampire, and she’s been twelve years old for a very long time. She has seen and known much throughout the course of her terrible half-death, and in the friendship – and blossoming love – that develops between her and Oskar, Eli finds an opportunity to help someone rather than be a parasite. She teaches him to stand up for himself when confronted by bullies, and that he can be stronger than he thinks he is. More importantly, however, she shows him that he need not be alone.

As heartwarming as all of this is (and it is legitimately heartwarming; the children are both adorable, albeit in unusual ways, and I’ve known too many introverts not to see something slightly wonderful in Oskar’s being drawn out of himself), it is nevertheless the case that Let the Right One In is a symphony of blood. The peculiarities of vampiric folklore are vast and varied, and the film attempts to account for as many of them as possible, not by glossing over or reinventing them, like that other lame-fisted teen vampire film, Twilight, but rather by simply accepting that they exist and trying to force them into the grimly real world as much as they possibly can be. Most of the vampire’s major weaknesses are accounted for (with a particular focus on sunlight, obsessive compulsion and the need of being invited before entering a home), as are most of the vampire’s powers. Eli can fly, and she can hypnotize. She is supernaturally strong and fast, and she draws her vitality from human blood.

This need for blood forms one of the most fascinating – and, for viewers averse to such things, nauseating – aspects of the film. Eli is not a vampire of the elegant school. That is, she’s not some leather-clad badass hipster who fancies herself a god (I’m looking at you Blade, and Underworld, and Twilight, and most other vampire movies). She’s little better than a ravening animal, and she knows it – and acts like it. When the hunger comes upon her she becomes sallow and withdrawn, and emits a noxious scent. She moves with twitching nervousness, giving forth involuntary and inhuman growls, and it takes every ounce of resolve she can muster not to simply waylay the first person she sees. While she revels in the advantages her nature grants her, she hates the things it drives her to do. One way in which she deals with this is through the use of a (hypnotically-enslaved?) proxy, an adult male named Håkan (Per Ragnar), who goes out at night to capture people, knock them out with a whiff of halothane, drain them of their blood and bring it back to her in a jug. As I said, the film is not for the faint of heart, and vampirism is rightly shown in all of its wickedness. Eli, when forced to attack a victim herself, does not slither up out of the darkness to leave two discreet puncture marks after what looks like little more than an extended kiss, as most movie vampires would. No sir. That’s not how this plays out. She draws her victims in with subterfuge, or gets the drop on them from high ground, and there’s nothing silent about her approach. She comes at them like the roaring doom she is and doesn’t let go until the wet and flailing affair is finished.

Anyway, it would be easy to just talk about the elaborate world the film constructs without considering more technical matters, and to do so would be to miss much. Tomas Alfredson seems to have made a name for himself directing television shows, but the talent on display here is nothing short of astonishing. The composition of certain shots is of a sort that draws you out of the film without interfering with the film, if that makes any sense; the kind of stuff that makes you murmur, “wow, that was really well done” even as the narrative keeps its hold on you. His visual pallette in particular deserves mention: a constant and pleasing medley of cool blues and blacks with earthy browns and an ever-present blanket of white snow is the perfect background across which to splash the great gush of red, and the tendency to frame powerful static shots in doorways, windows and mirrors is just at the point where it’s helpful without going far enough to be a nuisance. The whole of the thing is ably assisted by lots of well-chosen ambient noise and music, as well as some subtle yet powerful original score work from Johan Söderqvist.

So enormous is my delight when it comes to Let the Right One In that it almost pains me to consider the moral element of the thing, because it seems as though it could hardly come out positively. Oskar – a twelve-year-old boy, to reiterate – wants to be a killer, but lacks the determination to do it. Eli is a killer, but hates being one. It’s awful to find oneself rooting for the blood-sucking monster, but such is Eli’s winsome kindness to Oskar that by the time the film’s beautiful and appalling conclusion rolls around – I couldn’t possibly spoil it for you; just know that it takes place at a swimming pool and you have never seen anything like it, ever – it would be difficult to support anyone else. While it’s true that revenge and its pursuit are pretty vital components to the film, it would not be accurate to say that the idea is necessarily approved. What’s more, while many of Eli’s and Oskar’s enemies do get their comeuppance at various points, and in various ways, in spite of his fantasies Oskar never acts but in self-defense, and in spite of her powers Eli never acts from malice. This is not to say that vampires are conceptually vindicated simply because they have to do something monstrous to survive, of course; the moral option for the virtue-oriented vampire is to simply starve to death (or resist the hunger forever, as with Astro City‘s vampiric priest/superhero, The Confessor). And: though the love that develops between Oskar and Eli is real and apparently enduring, for how long can it possibly endure? Oskar will age as normal. He will grow up. Will he still love her as he does now? Will she love him? Or will he just become a new servant to her hideous appetite? We might reasonably ask how old Håkan was when he first came under Eli’s power. Let the Right One In does not provide any easy answers about all of this, and I’m probably not the right person for trying to suss them out in any event.

As is often the case with foreign horror movies (and Let the Right One In is indeed a horror movie, whatever else it may be), an American remake is in the works and is due to be released in 2010. I’m betting they up the age of Oskar and Eli to their late teens and treat vampires in the Blade/Underworld manner, thereby ruining it. Oh, who am I kidding; they’ll ruin it no matter what they do. That’s what they do, now. They ruin things. Still, if it leads some intrigued viewers to check out the original, it may well be worth it in the end.

Let the Right One In is a film about children, but is most emphatically not for children. Apart from the aforementioned “symphony of blood” concern, there’s also a large amount of bad feeling and youthful bullying, a great deal of general menace, and even some brief and disconcerting nudity. A short scene in which Oskar visits his father only to have his father and his father’s “friend” cast significant glances at each other in a supremely ominous and discomforting way thankfully comes to nothing. Nevertheless, the film receives my unqualified recommendation for those who feel they can stomach it, and even a jovial “oh, come on” for those who feel they cannot.