Let the Right One In (Lat den Ratte Komma In)

Tomas Alfredson, 2008

So I spent the better part of Saturday afternoon and evening finishing up my book (The Comic Book Podcast Companion - http://www.amazon.com/Comic-Book-Podcast-Companion/dp/1605490180/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233023541&sr=8-1), which, incidentally is what kept me away from this poor, neglected blog for so long. By about 10:30, I was pretty burnt out and desperately needed a break. A quick glance at the trusty Internets revealed that Let the Right One In, a Swedish vampire flick I’d heard nothing but good things about, was playing down at the Riverview. Better yet, it was starting in twenty minutes and a mad, late night dash to the theater in the frigid Minnesota winter was exactly what I needed to get outside of my own head.

Like usual, I made it just in time, paid my three dollars (all in nickels and dimes, ‘natch) and picked out my seat amongst the near capacity crowd. That, by the way, is one thing I love about the cities. Here’s a place where easily three to four hundred people (the Riverview is a big place) will brave the cold to see a Swedish vampire movie. Truly, these are my people. Now, finding my seat was a little tricky as I came in just as the credits started. The credits consisted of a stark black screen, broken occasionally by small white text and a flurry of snowflakes. When I say the movie started out dark, I mean that literally. There was hardly enough reflected light to find an empty seat, forcing me into one on the aisle.

The credits set the perfect tone for the film as much of it takes place in the dark and the snow of a series of Swedish winter nights. The mood was everything 30 Days of Night aspired to, but missed in no small part because of its desire to be a crowd pleasing blockbuster. Let the Right One In, due I’m sure in no small part to the virtue of it’s being a foreign film, has little interest in going for the broader audience and that’s definitely to the film’s advantage. It’s not for everyone, but, if it’s what you’re into, you’re going to love it.

The story centers around Oskar (Kare Hedebrant), a bullied and ignored child who meets a young girl named Eli (Lina Leandersson) in the snow outside his apartment building one dark night. Eli is, of course, a vampire. She tells Oskar that, like him, she is twelve years old, but that she has been twelve for a long time. It’s a neat idea, if one that we’ve seen before. After all, the eternal little girl vampire played by Kirsten Dunst was the most interesting part of Interview with the Vampire. Interestingly, Eli acts throughout like a 12 year-old would, as if she truly is eternally 12 and not an experience old mind trapped in a 12 year-old body. Thanks to that fact, she and Oskar develop a true friendship that edges throughout the movie into the territory of young love. Eli encourages the best in Oskar, prompting him to finally stand up to the bullies who have long besieged him while Oskar gives Eli the compassion and simple companionship that has apparently been gone from her life for so long.

Now, from that description, you may well imagine a movie about love and friendship that’s fit for the whole family. That couldn’t be further from the truth. True, there is love and friendship, but, as I said before, it is set amidst blackness. Eli is, after all, a vampire. Better yet, she’s an old school monster vampire. So many vampire pictures these days imagine the blood-suckers as tall, wispy, long haired sex symbols who spend an inordinate amount of time loving and brooding (I’m looking at you, Twilight). Somewhere along the road, we traded Bram Stoker for Anne Rice and forgot that vampires are scary. Let the Right One In, however, embraces the old school. Eli may be a 12 year-old girl, but that only heightens her monstrosity when it does indeed manifest. Not long after we meet her, she claims her first victim, luring an older man into picking her up, ostensibly to carry her to the hospital. Once in his arms, she savagely tears into neck, crouching atop him once he falls, snarling and slurping, feeding like a beast. When Eli kills, it isn’t elegant; it’s feral.

The film features a number of fantastic deaths and dismemberments, most of which are shot from such a distance to avoid comical gore of any sort, leaving only the sense of horrible event as seen by an eye witness somewhere down the road. The penultimate pool scene in particular is pretty amazing and I’d love to describe it here, but to do so would spoil one of the most amazing on-screen killings I’ve seen in years, not to mention a really satisfying ending for the film.

Eli is not the film’s only killer. When we meet her, Eli lives with an older man. He is Eli’s caretaker, which means that he leaves the apartment at night, carrying a bottle of ether, a funnel, a gallon jug, a plastic raincoat, and a knife to prey on unsuspecting pedestrians. That he adds a jar of acid to his tool kit only makes the scenario more horrifying and tragic. We never know who he is. At one point, Eli tells a nurse that the man is her “papa,” but that could easily be a lie. Whoever he is, he loves Eli. He may well be her papa or perhaps a brother who aged when she didn’t or, even sadder, another who, like Oskar, fell in love with Eli as a boy but grew old as she stayed young, leaving him to watch another win her heart. In this interpretation, we are also left with the sad conclusion that perhaps his is the same fate that one day awaits Oskar. The film never comes down concretely on his identity and I prefer it that way.

All that said, the film is a bit flawed. It is ultimately a little long in the tooth (if you’ll pardon the pun) and a bit too ponderous. Still, what works works so well as to make any flaws forgivable. That penultimate pool scene is such a stroke of brilliance that I’m certain to think of this movie for some time as both the most effective horror film I’ve seen in years (certainly since The Descent) and one of the more heartwarming. Three and a half stars all the way.

In any case, I’m apparently back at it. With the book finally done, I think I should have the time for this old blog again. And it seems like I picked just the right time to come back as it’s Dudies time once again. Look for those in the coming weeks. Until then, thanks for reading.