Let the Right One In

(2008)

Directed by

Tomas Alfredson

Review by Zach Saltz

After the massive hype and subsequent disappointment of Catherine Hardwicke’s adaptation of Twilight (a fall from grace only comparable to the overarching disenchantment of Snakes on a Plane when the fanboys and girls actually saw the pic), it appeared as though the venerable emo-teen-vampire genre had just about breathed its last breath.  But appropriately, the genre about creatures that cannot die has, well, reinvigorated its own life with Let the Last One In, a Swedish film that reminds us all that, like automobiles and pornography disguised as “art of high taste,” Europeans just do everything better than Americans.

The film stars Kåre Hedebrant as Oskar, a lonely 12-year-old who looks like a cross between the naïve innocence of Geory Desmouceaux in L’Argent de Poche and the demonic overpaid carnality of Macaulay Culkin in The Good Son.  He dreams of fighting back against the bullies that make his life a daily hell, and is fascinated by a series of grisly murders that terrify and baffle his close-knit town.  His only friend is a beautiful mysterious girl named Eli (Lina Leandersson) whom he befriends one chilly night on the playground outside his apartment complex.  He is clearly smitten; she tells him that he cannot be her friend.

The problems in their relationship are not solely attributable to raging hormones and an abundance of pallid Scandinavian skin; for Eli, alas, is a vampire and, without giving too much of the plot away, the series of murders it is revealed are related to her insatiable appetite for human blood (she, unlike the eco-friendly family of vampires in Twilight, is most assuredly not a “vegetarian” when it comes to the blood she devours).  Eli does not inform him of this until a strikingly frank scene where the two lay in bed after she has removed her clothing (remember this is Europe, not America); after Oskar asks her if she would like to be his girlfriend, she solemnly responds, “Oskar, I am not a girl” (it is this line that has surely made some critics such as James Berardinelli amusingly compare the film more to The Crying Game than Twilight).  It is clear that Oskar’s blood is everything that Eli desires, but her burgeoning love for the boy is what prevents her from irreparable tragedy.

If I have a weakness as a filmgoer, it is films about first love, whether it be The Man in the Moon or My Girl or Hearts in Atlantis.  Though Let the Right One In is certainly one of the most unconventional stories of early puppy love, it has a similar effect as the aforementioned films, including various instances of holding hands, rejection of school and classmates, and first kisses.  While the film is effective as a horror piece, it is especially affecting as a love story, and a surprisingly erotic one at that – director Tomas Alfredson has liberated his story from the limitations of American Puritanism toward adolescent sexuality, and though the film does not feature any explicit sex scenes, there are shots of both young actors that are laced with as much startlingly hot passion as I’ve seen in recent cinema (Alfredson has taken a cue from the latent eroticism of The Age of Innocence and The Bridges of Madison County, focusing his camera on the young characters’ faces rather than their bodies).  And yet the film also has scenes of saccharine sweetness, such as when Oskar gives Eli his Rubik’s Cube, dating the film to the mid-eighties.

If there is a flaw with the motion picture, it is in its depiction of secondary characters – largely adults who seem to have little to do with the immediate story at hand.  Eli bites a woman who lives in the apartment complex, and while her initial reaction to the bite is startling enough, Alfredson overdoes it with feline special effects that look unreal.  Add to it the overlong sequences involving her hospital visit, along with some of her adult (and equally unnecessary) contemporaries, and the viewer yearns once again for the main strength of the story – the relationship between Oskar and Eli.

For the vast majority of the film, Let the Right One In is the way vampire cinema should be done – with sinister candor and lurid sexuality.  But the degree of unexpected sweetness as a love story is one propels the film to the label “one of the best films of the year.”

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