A vampire movie done right

How does a movie man­age to be dark and deeply dis­turb­ing, yet ten­der and touch­ing in the same breath? Swedish vam­pire film Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) is a beautifully-told macabre fan­tasy story that accom­plishes exactly that.

Oskar (Kåre Hede­brant) is a quiet but trou­bled twelve year old who is bul­lied by his class­mates and doesn’t know how to stand up for him­self. His life begins to change when he befriends Eli (Lina Lean­der­s­son), the mys­te­ri­ous girl who moves into the apart­ment next door.  But when Oskar’s small snowy home­town is dev­as­tated by a series of grisly mur­ders, he starts to real­ize his new best friend and love inter­est is not the girl she pre­tends to be.

“Squeal. Squeal like a pig!”

“I’m not a girl…”

Let the Right One In is part com­ing of age story, part atmos­pheric hor­ror.  Never too obvi­ous or overly delib­er­ate, it’s a sub­tle and slowly-building story punc­tu­ated by gory visu­als that are jar­ringly ter­ri­fy­ing against the film’s oth­er­wise serene and iso­lated snow­bound set­ting.  Direc­tor Tomas Alfredson’s use of spe­cial effects is wel­com­ingly under­stated in favor of a few blink-and-you-might-miss them moments of pure shock, under­scored by grue­some visu­als and an uncom­fort­able feel­ing of foreboding.

Most dis­turb­ing, how­ever, is Oskar’s dan­ger­ous infat­u­a­tion with Eli despite the hor­ri­fy­ing things she is capa­ble of.  It’s the focus on the del­i­cate rela­tion­ship between these two alien­ated youths that really sets this film apart and estab­lishes new stan­dards for what good vam­pire movies should be.

Related posts:

1. Happee Tanks­giv­inz
2. I never quite grew up…