On a separate site, I commented on the recent glut of vampire films that have been produced, and if there’s one that you must see, it is Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In. This film intelligently and intricately captures the beatific vampire mythology while avoiding becoming a horror-flick driven by carnage.
Unfortunately, Let the Right One In will soon be bastardized by Hollywood since they have fast-tracked the economically titled Let Me In, which already casts an ominous pall on Eli (now Abby). Before this should-be-abortion gestates:
Let the Right One In focuses on Oskar (Kare Hedebrant), an alienated twelve year old boy who becomes infatuated with Eli (Lina Leandersson), the mysterious girl who has moved next door. Because he is routinely tormented by school bullies and is detached from his mostly-absent father and oblivious mother, Oskar seeks refuge during the evening on the bars of a jungle gym outside of his apartment complex. This is where he first encounters Eli, the girl who has been twelve-years-old for two hundred years.
Andersen has crafted a gripping, emotionally driven story that is intelligently told without distractive exposition. I think this is what makes Let the Right One In so intriguing—the camera tells the story and lets the actors’ emotions emerge on the celluloid. Because of the absence excess jabber, we are left to journey through the film much like the characters do—confused with a sense of intrigue.
We know Eli is a vampire from early in the film when she hides in the shadows of an overpass and lures Joffe to his death by meekly imploring “help me.” No crescendo of chamber music or screeching violins accompanies this scene; the only sounds are Joffe’s feet crunching the ubiquitous, ice-crusted snow and the charge of an elevated train barreling across the overpass. As Joffe bends down to help Eli, she springs on his back, and they both fall to the ground.
Refreshingly, Andersen does not employ the recently-popular hand held, frenetic shot; instead, the camera is a voyeur watching Joffe and Eli fall through the shadows and settle on the snow that has been plowed to the side of the vacant road. The next shot is a quick cut to Eli perched on Joffe’s back where she gently lifts his head and breaks his neck by twisting it quickly to one side.
We are privy to a girl who superficially evokes innocence but has just committed murder. But as she flees the scene, we are left to ponder why she breaks the man’s neck. Couldn’t she simply drain the blood and move on to her next fix? Eventually, we learn that she kills the man to save him, but until then we are wary of her purpose and intentions with Oskar. Without acknowledging she is a vampire, Eli admits she “lives off blood,” but in that brief line Joffe’s murder becomes an act of necessity followed by an act of mercy. Eli does not wish to “turn” anyone else into a vampire, nor does she praise the inherent mortality or the super-human strength that comes with the vampiric curse.
In the same vein, Hakan (Per Ragnar) lives as a mystery and dies as a mystery. As we meet him, he knocks out a young man with some sort vaporous ether, strings him up like a pig and slits his throat to collect in a plastic container the blood that aurally flows from a severed jugular. The first assumption is that he’s a vampire, but you’re never quite sure until about thirty minutes later—when it’s never spoken, but silently revealed by a moment between Oskar and Eli—when Hakan is nowhere near the scene.
Each shot in Let the Right One In is meticulously chosen and masterfully used. There is not a single frame wasted, and not an extra word uttered.
