Let The Right One In

[SiliasRuby]

You just find that out?

[MacGuffin]

'Let the Right One In' tackles vampires but is no 'Twilight'
The Swedish film tells a tender bloodsucking tale.
By Dennis Lim; Los Angeles Times

Vampire stories are always about desire and repression, which makes the teenage vampire an especially potent symbol of the hormonal confusion and awkward intensity of the wonder years.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" confirmed the pop-culture potential of adolescent bloodsuckers, and the phenomenon reached a frenzied peak with the recent teen-girl hit "Twilight" (out on DVD and Blu-ray March 21). But a more surprising and delicate treatment of youthful bloodlust can be found in one of last year's most beloved art-house imports, the Swedish coming-of-age tale "Let the Right One In" (out on DVD and Blu-ray on Tuesday).

"Let the Right One In" has made a little more than $2 million at the U.S. box office, not bad for a foreign-language film, but to put things in perspective, only about 1% of what "Twilight" has grossed. Both movies are based on books, revolve around interspecies relationships between two very pale loners, and recognize the larger-than-life emotions that come with being a teenager, but the similarities are skin deep.

"Twilight," directed by Catherine Hardwicke and faithfully adapted from the first installment in Stephenie Meyer's hugely successful young-adult franchise, is a Gothic romance that softens the vampire movie's usual edge of danger (undead dreamboat Robert Pattinson is a "vegetarian" who sticks to animal blood). It also sneakily turns the genre's fascination with illicit appetites into a pro-abstinence parable. And if Buffy, with her vampire-slaying prowess and fondness for cute boy vampires, was often held up as a credible feminist heroine, Kristen Stewart's smitten Bella dreams simply of being passively ravished, a fantasy that her gentlemanly suitor nobly declines to fulfill.

"Let the Right One In" is also more chaste than the average vampire movie -- its characters are barely pubescent -- but it's also a good deal more tender and intense. Directed by Tomas Alfredson from a screenplay by John Ajvide Lindqvist (adapting his own novel), it unfolds in a sterile, permanently frozen Swedish suburb that makes for a stark counterpoint to the roiling emotions of the story. A frail, androgynous-looking 12-year-old from a broken home, Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) is a friendless kid who lives mainly in his own head -- that is, until he meets Eli (Lina Leandersson), the waif-like Goth girl next door, who doesn't go to school, never gets cold and sometimes smells a little strange.

No less sincere than "Twilight" but much less overwrought, "Let the Right One In" brings an unsentimental eye to the daily horrors of adolescence. In fact, its bloodline can be traced less to other vampire movies than to the tradition of Swedish films about childhood, from Ingmar Bergman's "Fanny and Alexander" to Lasse Hallström's "My Life as a Dog" to Lukas Moodysson's "Show Me Love." The film is unnervingly clear-eyed about the cruelty of children (Oskar is mercilessly bullied by his classmates) and the deep scars that can be inflicted on formative psyches (he harbors violent revenge fantasies).

Alfredson is something of a polymath, best known in Sweden as a member of a Monty Python-esque troupe, with whom he made his previous film, "Four Shades of Brown"; he also directed a stage production of "My Fair Lady" in Stockholm last year. As a horror director, he's capable of stylistic flourishes (a spontaneous-combustion scene, a bravura climax in a swimming pool), but the film's most distinctive quality is its otherwordly stillness, a deadpan matter-of-factness that amplifies the dread -- gruesome scenes are often shot from afar and staged without fanfare.

Teen vampires show no sign of going out of fashion. "Twilight" follow-ups are rolling off the studio conveyor belt (the second film, "New Moon," directed by Chris Weitz, is out in November). And an American version of "Let the Right One In" is in the works, to be directed by Matt Reeves, who made "Cloverfield," a movie whose blunt, high-concept approach to horror is antithetical to Alfredson's. The remake, with its eye on the teeny-bopper market, will be superfluous at best. But fans of "Twilight" willing to brave the subtitles of the Swedish original might well find something they didn't know they were missing.

[picolas]

every frame of this was EXQUISITE! the performances from the kids are UNREAL. i must give a xix awards campaign shoutout to those kids. parts of it mildly confused me but i'm going to be watching it again anyways so that's fine.

[mogwai]

it's easily hands down the best swedish movie i have ever seen. i seriously hope the remake will suck ass.

[picolas]

why?? i hope the remake is just as if not more amazing because i like amazing movies in general and it would make more people want to see the first one and not ruin it somehow.

[mogwai]

why?? i hope the remake is just as if not more amazing because i like amazing movies in general and it would make more people want to see the first one and not ruin it somehow.

i'm just saying, i don't like it because the whole thing just seems lazy with a remake. just as someone wanted to remake "my life as a dog" into a english version. why not enjoy the fact that the movie stands on its own no matter what language it is?

[picolas]

okay. i understand that. it is pointless. but who knows. maybe we'll get lucky and someone talented with a slightly different, interesting interpretation of it will get to make it. on the other hand, vanilla sky is an abomination.

[Stefen]

Original ideas are overrated.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

it's easily hands down the best swedish movie i have ever seen.

I heard Bergman is pretty good.

[mogwai]

it's easily hands down the best swedish movie i have ever seen.

I heard Bergman is pretty good.

i heard he's not up to much these days.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

it's easily hands down the best swedish movie i have ever seen.

I heard Bergman is pretty good.

i heard he's not up to much these days.

And in death, all of his films have been absorbed into nothingness.

[mogwai]

it's easily hands down the best swedish movie i have ever seen.

I heard Bergman is pretty good.

i heard he's not up to much these days.

And in death, all of his films have been absorbed into nothingness.

i think he's alright, i think "fanny and alexander" is just pure brilliance. i think he's more remembered outside of sweden, because most of us swedes find it boring to talk about him.

edit: three "i think".

[Gold Trumpet]

This is as enthralling fantasy as I can remember seeing. Every inch of this film had me sucked in and now that I've just watched it for the first time, I want to watch it again. I would have to point to Miyazaki's better works to identify films that really re-define their genre the way this film does. Considering I own all of Miyazaki's films, I could see this being a similar kind of favorite.

A few critics (that I've read) bashed this film not because it was bad, but because it was well made for what to them seemed like a mediocre subject. I don't think the film should be criticized for a lack of magnitude. It is about vampires and the subject is a genre tale, but the film rightly stays true to a lot of the hallmarks of the genre. I think if Let the Right One in started to become a social or political film, I would have criticized it, but it's just a love story. Simple in nature, but everything in this film is so well made and inviting that that is the true endearment.

[pete]

my problem wasn't really about how it failed to be an epic.  but instead, it was content with placing one genre next to the other.  I appreciated the trailer, which told me it might be a good idea, while the film itself never delivered.  the marriage of the two genres wasn't snug and was a bit generic.  instead of one predictable story, this film had two, that was the big whoop.  nothing about the script made me care for the boy's plight, since it was extremely typical and one-dimensional.  nothing about the love story was particularly sweet, and nothing about the vampire story was scary or sexy.

[Gold Trumpet]

my problem wasn't really about how it failed to be an epic.  but instead, it was content with placing one genre next to the other.  I appreciated the trailer, which told me it might be a good idea, while the film itself never delivered.  the marriage of the two genres wasn't snug and was a bit generic.  instead of one predictable story, this film had two, that was the big whoop.  nothing about the script made me care for the boy's plight, since it was extremely typical and one-dimensional.  nothing about the love story was particularly sweet, and nothing about the vampire story was scary or sexy.

I never saw it as the merging of two genres. To me the film was a love story that was about a vampire. It meant that the film had to show signs of different genres, but it never fully embraced them. The main tone of the film was an effective and ambient tone that was more reminiscient of certain European styles. The film isn't a huge push to curb style trends like other art films, but the choices it made helped make the story more inviting for me.

I understand how the film can come off as generic. If you don't buy into the characters then a lot of what works about the film will come off as hollow and boring. If the film didn't have the style to it I'm not sure I would have liked it at all. The story would have come as overly simplistic, but the style paints each character in effective and interesting ways (to me at least).