Normally, we begin a hardcore look at horror movies in October; however, we’re making an exception for two reasons.
- The American remake of Let the Right One In, Let Me In, opens tomorrow.
- October begins tomorrow.
I think we can make an exception in this case, don’t you? Especially when said movie to be reviewed is the best vampire movie ever made. And no, it’s not hyperbole if it lives up to the hype.
Based on the novel by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist and directed by Tomas Alfredson, Let the Right One In tells the story of a boy with a runny nose named Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant), in a small snow-covered town in the 1970s, who gets a new neighbor: a vampire girl named Eli (Lina Leandersson). She moves in one night with an old man who appears to be her dad, but they quickly block out the windows with cardboard, and Oskar only sees Eli at night, when she comes out to watch him playing in the snow. Eli is curious and sweet, but oddly unaffected by the cold, unfamiliar with things like a Rubik’s Cube, and unable to stomach the candy he tries to buy her. Oskar hears snatches of angry conversation through the walls of their apartment building, and becomes fascinated with Eli, while strangely gruesome murders begin to occur in the town.
The film perfectly captures the dark, cold nights and the stillness of this place, of Oskar’s loneliness, his longing for his separated father, and paralyzing fear of some merciless bullies at school. But there are few other places he can go, which is how he ends up alone at night outside his apartment building thrusting a knife into a tree as if stabbing his tormentor. It’s an uneasy revenge fantasy that attracts the notice of a girl even paler than he is. The story moves at a snail’s pace in the beginning, but somehow with a brilliant urgency to it that keeps the viewer fascinated; the shots are beautiful and Leandersson’s Eli has the most riveting face.
The movie throws in a few subtle CGI expressions later when she is thirsting for blood, as well as some eerie, animal-like trills and growls, but the actress does an excellent job as both an innocent 12-year-old and a seductive hunter that has been around the block for near 200 years or so. It seems that Eli’s “dad” is actually a bumbling excuse for a provider for her, tying people up, slitting their throats and draining the blood to bring home.
But the dad’s mishaps lead Eli to have to “take care of this herself”, which results in a frightening scene where she lures a local guy under a bridge, murmuring, “Help me” from the shadows, like some evil child spirit. The movie does an incredible job of keeping Eli both likable and terrible, which is necessary to understand Oskar’s continuing admiration for her, even when she loses control and gives herself away at the sight of his blood. He figures out she’s a vampire, but she is still his only friend, and maybe even a girlfriend.
While Alfredson takes a darkly amused attitude toward the little world he has fashioned with such care, he also takes the morbid unhappiness of his young characters seriously. Both are achingly alone, and it is the ordinary fact of their loneliness rather than their extraordinary circumstances that makes the film more than the sum of its chills and estimable technique. Eli seizes on Oskar immediately, slipping her hand under his, writing him notes, becoming his protector, baring her fangs. “Are you a vampire?” he asks tremulously at one point. Her answer may surprise you, but it’s another of his questions — “Will you be my girlfriend?” — that will floor you.