April 2009
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Let The Right One In (15)
Printed 8th April 2009

Not four months on from the “Twilight phenomenon” renewed widespread popularity in vampire lore in a way not seen since the small screen success of Buffy, the Swedish Let the Right One In (Låt Den Rätte Komma In) knocks on your door to offer you an unconventional vampire tale quite unlike any other you will ever have seen before.

Less zeitgeisty and therefore unlikely to garner as much attention or box office success, Let the Right One In deserves your time, attention and money nevertheless; in a much more deserving way than teen angst and big-haired dreamboats ever will.

A beautiful-but-bizarre ode to friendship, love and loyalty, Let the Right One In is set in the 1980’s depression-era Stockholm suburb of Blackeberg. A perma-snow covered winter wonderland, Blackeberg hides a dark secret however: the newly-arrived presence of a vampire.

Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant, in a Haley Joel Osmont level of performance) is a bullied 12-year-old girl-boy loner living on a housing estate. With no friends to speak of and a trio of bigger boys constantly picking on him at school, Oskar spends his off-days alone in the snow dreaming of revenge.

Then Eli (Lina Leandersson), a peculiar girl that speaks in cryptics, who smells funny, who doesn’t wear a coat outside even though it’s freezing and can only come into a room after she’s been invited enters his life. Initially reluctant to strike up an accord, Eli becomes progressively drawn to the unusual Oskar as they spend more time together and he shares his feelings with her.

Giving Oskar the strength to hit back at his bullies, Eli unwittingly puts in motion events that can only end one way. And when Oskar discovers that Eli must feed upon other people’s blood to live, he must decide how far his love for Eli can extend and just what he can accept.

Offering an entirely fresh twist on the vampire myth (whilst strictly sticking to most of the acknowledged conventions laid out before it), Let the Right One In is not your average bog-standard vampirism standing as a metaphor for sexuality tale. Instead it chooses to comment on the repressed anger and desire for violence that grips almost all of us at some point in our lives. The touching relationship that Oskar and Eli share is not one born out of sexuality; instead it is an innocent one of longing, of equality and a need for companionship. These may be children ("more or less", one of them is hundreds of years old after all...), but the themes are not childish.

This is not a film of cheap gimmicks and jumps. It is not even a horror per se. No, it is a film all about the complexities of relationships. It is a (stylised) social realist film about the life-and-times of Swedish living. It is something truly unique and something truly special. Of course, that’s not to say it is without its creeps, jumps and scare-tactics. Atmospheric, with a sense of eerie unease from the start and a slow burn that you know is always escalating towards something truly horrifying, it doesn’t skimp or cop out on this promise with a climax that will no doubt be one of the talking points of any film this year. It leaves an indelible mark upon the mind.

As does the scarily good performance of one Lina Leandersson as the 12 going on 200 year-old vampire Eli. Managing to somehow appear as if she's a child and an adult in the same body all at the same time, it is a performance well beyond her years to place in the top five child performances of all-time. Otherworldly would be the watch word and she will surely be one-to-watch.

As an alternative vampire take, this rates as one of the best, much more so than the graphic 30 Days of Night, the tween-targeting pulpy-populist Twilight or the tongue-in-cheek, lads mag, hammer horrorish Lesbian Vampire Killers that we’ve had unleashed in recent times. As a dark adult fable commenting on life through a lens with children at the centre of its story, this rates up there as one of the best to stand right alongside Guillermo Del Toro’s infallible magnum opus Pan’s Labyrinth.  As a cinema experience for 2009, this will undoubtedly rate as one of the best no matter what’s on offer from the rest. So do yourself a favour and Let the Right One In.

*****