Movie Review: LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
Oskar, a pale, lonely boy, bullied by his schoolmates, finds love and revenge when he meets Eli, a strange, compelling girl, who is unfortunately also a vampire.
Set in a bleak and icy Stockholm suburb in the 1980s, LET THE RIGHT ON IN tells the story of 12-year old Oskar (Käre Hedebrant), a pale, lonely boy, unrelentingly terrorized by his classmates. Shunted between his divorced parents, who pay him little attention, his hobbies are somewhat grotesque: collecting newspaper articles about murders and gory accidents and dreaming savage dreams of revenge on his tormentors. But things suddenly change when he meets Eli (Lina Leandersson), a girl the same age, who has moved into the next door apartment with her father. Oskar is quick to notice that something is not quite right with the pallid girl, who only appears at night and seems completely insensitive to the biting cold but, as lonely and reclusive as he, they strike up a friendship and gradually become close. And soon, with Eli’s support, Oskar begins to stand up for himself and face his bullies. When he discovers that Eli is a vampire and responsible for several brutal deaths in the region, he is torn between his fear of her - after all, he could be her next lunch - and his burgeoning feelings for his newfound friend.
What works so well in both the novel and the film is that the elements of horror blend so harmoniously into the sensitive framework, lending both an indefinable quality that makes them so very special. Technically a horror movie, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is more of a coming-of-age story about the developing friendship between two young outcasts and thus much more than just another vampire tale. There is the budding of a love story, but one without any outright sensuality, for the children are young and sexually innocent. Nor is there the excessive gore we have come to expect from the genre. Director Tomas Alfredson is more focused on the emotional aspects than shocking suspense, although the movie does have its own unique atmosphere. In stark, depressing colors, the film tells a poignant story of friendship and the end of childhood in the darkness, snow and ice of the Land of the Midnight Sun, beautifully underscored by the music of Johan Söderqvist.
True to well-established vampire myth: blood is Eli’s only sustenance (Oskar offers her a candy but she throws it back up), she cannot enter a dwelling uninvited, nor can she endure sunlight, has icy cold skin, can move and shinny up walls at terrific speed, and her bite is either lethal or contagious. Only 12 years old, “But I’ve been 12 for a very long time,” as she says, like a hunted animal she must move from place to place to avoid discovery and capture. A melancholy creature, yet not quite so tragic and self-castigating as the characters depicted in the recent cult movie TWILIGHT, to which it is often compared, or the popular TV series TRUE BLOOD - vampires are quite the rage at the moment - Eli’s character is somehow refreshing. Played by first-time actress, Lina Leandersson gives a very good performance indeed: coming across as both enigmatic and compelling, her appearance shifting from youthful innocence to a countenance from the world of nightmare and all things in between (accolades here to the make-up artists). Oskar is effectively played by first-timer Käre Hedebrant. Pale blond, pasty, slight of stature, he is aloof, diffident, and just a bit weird.
Many of the incidental characters, some of whom are destined to be Eli’s victims, are less convincing and much of the dialog seems wooden - which may well be the fault of the German dubbing - although in the US the movie was screened in Swedish with English subtitles, never popular with American audiences. And this is one of the handicaps which might prevent this film from attracting the wide audience it so well deserves. Another is that it is aimed at no clear target group. Too slow-moving and possibly too sensitive for the teen market; while offering too little gore for hardcore horror fans, or too much for the sensitive Arthouse crowd.
Still, it has swept up an array of coveted critics and festival awards, including three CFCAs (Chicago Film Critics Association Awards) for Best Foreign Language Film, Most Promising Filmmaker (Tomas Alfredson) and Most Promising Performer (Lina Leandersson), the Edinburgh International Film Festival, FantAsia Film Festival, Göteborg Film Festival, NatFilm Festival, Sitges - Catalonian International Film Festival, the SEFCA Award, Toronto After Dark Film Festival, and voted best narrative feature at the Tribeca Film Festival, Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Awards, and the Woodstock Film Festival - so it has hardly gone unacknowledged.
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (Sweden 2008); (Original title: Låt den rätte komma in); Genre: Horror-drama; US distributor: Magnolia Pictures: US release date: November 24, 2008; German distributor: MFA Filmverleih; German release date: Dec. 23, 2008; Running time: 114 minutes; Director: Tomas Alfredson; Writer: John Ajvide Lindqvist, (based on the novel LET ME IN; Main cast: Kåre Hedebrandt, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar; Music: Johan Söderqvist; Cinematographer: Hoyte Van Hoytema; Production designer: Eva Norén; Editor: Dino Jonsäter
Poster courtesy of Magnolia Pictures/MFA Filmverleih
2 Responses to “Movie Review: LET THE RIGHT ONE IN”
Leave a Reply
I disagree with you. I’m not a die-hard horror fan, but when categorised into the genre, I would expect the film to have loads of gore. The film was too pointless.
Check out these awesome Let the Right One in dolls (and my review)!
http://www.awesomeallday.com/?p=436