OK, I’m just gonna come right out with it. I love vampire stories! I really do. I know there are a whole lot of people out there who aren’t afraid to proclaim their love for anything vampire, but my friends are not among them. I would never hear the end of it if I gave my ability to go all geek over vampire stories full reign. So I’ve pretty much stayed in the vampire-story-lovin’ closet, putting out favorable comments here and there about stories or movies I’ve liked, only to hear dead, disinterested air in response.
So when I read about Let the Right One In, I pretty much knew I was on my own. Vampire movie - check, foreign film with subtitles - check, poster with a little girl covered in blood - check. I was on my own. I considered waiting for the DVD to watch it, but word of mouth on this film was so good, I decided to bite the bullet and see it. So I trucked on out to the city on my own to buy my ticket to the show.
My friends definitely would not have liked it. They would have thought it was too dark, too foreign, too slow, and just plain too bizarre.
Me, I liked it. A lot. I don’t know how the director managed to bring the kind of atmosphere he brought to this film. It is dark, lonely, and bleak and not at all contrived. You can feel the isolation in which all the characters in this movie live.
The atmosphere is the perfect frame for the two leads and their circumstance. Oskar is a 12 year old boy, relentlessly bullied in school, benignly neglected by his divorced mother and father, very much alone with no one to understand him. He likes to collect newspaper articles about murder, and carries a knife around with which he imagines brutal revenge scenarios on his tormentors.
One night, while stabbing a telephone pole representing a bully, he meets Eli. She is his new next door neighbor. She is 12 years old “more or less”, does not wear a coat or shoes in the dead of winter, smells funny, and she tells him she cannot be his friend. It’s a load of hooey because you can tell right away they are both in bad need of a friend.
The movie covers their growing friendship. Eli teaches Oskar to stand up to the bullies. He gives her his Rubiks cube and teaches her a code so they can communicate with each other through the walls of their building. Oskar knows there is something strange about Eli, but he doesn’t care. He asks her to go steady even though it is not clear to him what going steady entails. Eli is just as taken with Oskar, drawn strongly to him even though you feel it’s against her better judgement. If it weren’t so bizarre, it would be cute. But underneath, you can feel how much these two understand each other, and how badly they need each other’s friendship.
Eli’s need is particularly desperate. Her human caretaker, who has been killing people to provide Eli with blood, has become aged and inefficient at his task, leaving Eli to fend for herself. The scenes in which Eli hunts and feeds are very creepy. This film may have been low budget, but it shows that you don’t need a large budget to bring the creepy.
With the murders, the attempted murders, and the attacks growing, the net starts to close on Eli. When she tells Oskar she has to leave, you feel the cavernous hole her departure will bring. For me, it happened without my realizing. This movie slowly builds itself, taking its time, letting you sit back and observe, and then, surprisingly, feel. With most vampire movies, it’s about the gore, and the scare. This movie has all that, but what’s so surprising about it is the depth of genuine feeling. Vampires are not human, and are normally not portrayed well-enough for an audience to relate to. Here, the director succeeds in making Eli relatable in her loneliness, her need for contact, her appreciation for what she has lost, and more importantly, her need to survive. Other movies have tried to bring that, but this one actually nails it, and nails it pretty deep.
There are bits of humor in the story. The dark, isolated atmosphere is so pervasive that the humor takes you by surprise. Again, I don’t know how the director did it, but the final denouement was suspenseful, touching, horrifying and pretty damn funny.
This is a really good film. Nothing flashy, nothing forced, very subtle, but packed with a big emotional punch. I read that an American version of this film is in the works. Hmmm. American remakes are usually flashy, forced, not too subtle and very rarely do they pack the kind of emotional punch this movie does.
Oh well, at least we have this movie. It is by far one of the best vampire films out there.
