Let the Right One In - Tomas Alfredson

Sweden’s much-acclaimed, much-talked-about and much-shockingly-left-out-of-the-Best-Foreign-Film-Oscar-nominations – ‘Let The Right One In’ – has been genrefied as a “horror”. It has also been called a “vampire film”. But while it has its bloodcurdling and bloodsucking moments – all the more chilling because they creep up on you like a black cat at midnight – it is really neither of those things. What it is, is a story about two creatures of the dark – the dark being not the obvious kind that has things going bump in it...

Sweden’s much-acclaimed, much-talked-about and much-shockingly-left-out-of-the-Best-Foreign-Film-Oscar-nominations – ‘Let The Right One In’ – has been genrefied as a “horror”. It has also been called a “vampire film”. But while it has its bloodcurdling and bloodsucking moments – all the more chilling because they creep up on you like a black cat at midnight – it is really neither of those things.

What it is, is a story about two creatures of the dark – the dark being not the obvious kind that has things going bump in it, but that horrifying void of loneliness.

Oskar is an only child – fatherless because of divorce and utterly friendless. His mother seems to be always at work, and his only contact with his schoolmates is when they bully and beat up on him on his way to class, and home. Yet, he doesn’t come across so much as pathetic, as outside the world in which he lives. He seems more weary of his tormentors than terrified of them; he sits at the back of the class not because he’s afraid of being called on for the answers – he knows the answers – but just because he’d rather be in the background. He comes across like a wise soul older than his years.

Maybe he is. Maybe that’s why he’s drawn to Eli – a little girl equally lonely, even if for very different reasons; she’s a vampire after all – and maybe that’s why she is drawn to him.

Eli is played brilliantly by Swedish child actor Lina Leandersson in what could well be a role that leads her to stardom. Luke Y. Thompson of LA Weekly wrote, "When it comes to preteens as eternal vampires, Kirsten Dunst in 'Interview With the Vampire' used to be the gold standard; in Leandersson, I think we have a new champion". He may well be right. (Although some credit must also go to Elif Ceylan whose voice was used to overdub Lina’s, since director, Tomas Alfredson, wanted a less feminine voice for Eli).

Leandersson and Alfredson together create a vampire unlike any we have ever seen on the screen. Yes, she can only enter a home when she’s invited in, yes, she can only come out when it’s dark, and yes, of course she drinks blood. But Eli is not a vampiric formula of majesty, sex and magnetism. She is an androgynous, cagey stray for whom drinking blood is not a pleasure but a mere means of survival. More vampire bat than Lestat. This is a powerful, complex and understated performance far beyond Leandersson’s 13 years – fitting really, since Eli is far beyond her “human” age of 12. As she says to Oskar when he asks her how old she really is, “I’m 12, but I’ve been 12 for a long time”.

She has also not been in a relationship with a human for a long time, except for the chilling one she shares with her “caretaker” – an old man who may be her father, who may have at one time been her better half, who may, even more disturbingly be a paedophile. (Since we’re never told exactly how old Eli is in vampire years, we’ll never know).

You get the feeling that both Oskar and Eli are lone rangers by choice; he because of the fear of being misunderstood, she because of the fear of being found out. Their very first meeting she tells him, “I can’t be your friend”, and he doesn’t really seem to mind either way. He has long accepted there isn’t anyone who can be his friend. Yet, inevitably, the two are drawn together. For in each other they have finally found what we all seek in a companion – unquestioning acceptance. In Eli, Oskar has found someone who doesn’t see him as a freak. In Oskar, Eli has found someone who doesn’t condemn what she is. In the simplest of terms, they “get” one another. They have finally found the right one to let in.

I hope I don’t for a minute have you thinking this is some saccharine pre-adolescent love story. Banish the thought. Consider the scene in which Oskar offers his lady love a candy – that clichéd ritual of puppy love – only to have to hold her head as she violently retches it up. Those few moments for this reviewer say everything there is to say about the raw power and deep darkness of this movie that is constantly going where you don’t expect it to.

‘Let The Right One In’ is based on the Swedish bestseller by the same name, penned by John Ajvide Lindqvist. By all accounts, Alfredson has done a wonderful job translating the bleak and oppressively eerie atmosphere of the book to the screen – a rare achievement indeed. Of course, surely he was helped greatly by the fact that Lindqvist himself wrote the screenplay.

The brooding cinematography paints the screen with cold blues and gloomy greys. The “horror-movie” moments don’t leap dramatically in your face, they just happen – and that makes them all the creepier, and all the more effective. The star-crossed lovers are no Romeo and Juliet out to destroy themselves; they are strong, wilful and would rather destroy what stands in their way. You feel for them, yet you find yourself fearful – for them, and of them.

The best movies are always those that aren’t what they seem. Or rather, those that are more than they seem. ‘Let The Right One In’ seems to be about a boy and his vampire girlfriend. It is far, far more.

When is a vampire movie not a vampire movie? Check it out!