Let The Right One In (Film)

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
Dir: Tomas Alfredson
Sweden, 2008
28/04/09

Oskar (Kare Hadebrant), a young boy living in Sweden in the early eighties lives at home with his mother, has no friends and is bullied at school. He starts to befriend a girl, Eli (Lina Leandersson) who moves into the apartment next door with her ‘father’ and she helps him to deal with the bullies and realise his fantasies for revenge, but her arrival also coincides with a spate of killings that are making the townsfolk suspicious.

It may have only been around for a year but already so much has been written about Let The Right One In (Lat Den Ratte Komma In). Maybe it’s the constant dirge of mindless horror films that has led to this being embraced so much, and that it has reinvigorated one of the most clichéd and boring of horror genres, the vampire film. It’s based on a hugely popular novel by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist, but Tomas Alfredson deserves full credit for his adaptation because it would be easy to take the premise and make a generic, gory horror flick. Alfredson avoids familiarity by making the vampire a supporting character that aids Oksar’s development, and making it thematically closer to a coming of age film then about sex or lust or whatever vampire films are usually meant to be about. It also refuses to revel in it’s own mythology, presenting Eli’s vampiristic traits as the character and story develops and they are never dwelled upon, except for her hunger, which is no more a driving force for her then Oskar’s urge for revenge is for him.

When Oskar and Eli first meet Oskar is acting out his revenge fantasies by stabbing a tree. Eli immediately indicates that they can’t be friends but it’s obvious that she is as desperate for companionship as he is. They bond and Eli drops more hints about her true nature, such as her not having any parents and that she has been twelve “for a very long time”. Oskar learns Morse code so that they can communicate between a wall and they become infatuated with one another, and after a succession of murders Oskar confronts Eli, already knowing that she is a vampire. It’s slow and awkward, and sometimes life interrupts (such as Oskar having to visit his father) but this means that the development of their friendship is incredibly believable when taking into consideration their states of minds.

There’s no hint of schmaltz in the relationship; it is dark, obsessive and incredibly intense for their age. Whilst Oskar is a sympathetic character we see several hints of a damaged child that dams complete empathy, such as his predominance towards knives, and a scene where he goads Eli into entering his flat without being invited which is particularly unsettling for the cold-heartedness of the action and his expression. But this adds to their complexities, and it is in it’s fleshing out of the Oskar and Eli that the film really succeeds with both actors performing astutely, especially Kare Hadebrant as Oskar who has to stump up a huge emotional palette for the role.

The direction is subtle, immersing Oskar in particular amongst the snow filled streets of the Swedish town which is the pathetic fallacy of the towns inhabitants, their lack of any real warmth to each other, mainly just drinking their days away. One of Alfredson’s successes is creating a group of realistic eccentrics and losers out of little screen time. The woman who is infected by Eli is given remarkable depth by the simple fact that she refuses to accept what she is becoming and instead chooses a drastic fate. The friends of the bully also, being weak, are made interesting by their ambiguity and the simple hint that maybe without the bully they could be friends with Oskar. All the characters wander about innocuously, almost like they are simplified by the harmlessness of their environment, or maybe they are just too naïve to think anything could be lurking in their small Swedish town, and because of this they are easy prey to whomever may be waiting to pounce. It’s interesting how in most films a murder can happen in dark alley without anyone seeing whereas here Alfredsen turns that on it’s head and points out that even in the wilderness it’s difficult to do anything without somebody seeing something (Alfredson shoots most the set pieces from a distance so it seems as if we too are we are observing from a hidden position).

Sound is also vital and one could say it is Alfredson’s trump card. Every movement of Eli and Oskar is amplified and twisted to make whatever connotations Alfredson sees fit, so when they two first meet every turn of Eli’s head or limb movement sounds like the cracking of ice as Oskar slowly gets underneath her unfeeling exterior and she melts to him. We also hear every movement of Oskar’s lips throughout the film, coming to a crescendo when Eli kisses Oskar, the sound almost unnatural as she leaves traces of blood on him, implicating him in her crimes.

Another of Alfredson’s strength lies in his use of dark visual humour. There are no jokes per se but much of what would normally constitute as horror is shown at a distant and in a somewhat lighter tone, yet it’s power no less diminished. One such scene is when Eli’s guardian, after and enquiry by a jogger, shows his potential victim the equipment he is about to use to debilitate him.

However, despite all the hails of masterpiece surrounding it, Let The Right One In is by no means free of flaws. The relationship between Eli and her guardian isn’t well presented. In the book he is a paedophile which adds effective depth but Alfredson understandably ejects this (feeling it was a sensitive subject he couldn’t do full justice to) but fails to offer any kind of alternative so instead we get a man who is seemingly fearful of Eli who goes out and gets caught both times he tries to procure blood for her, leaving one wondering how long he has actually being travelling with her. Also the relationship between Oskar and his parents is obscure, his mother seems to love him, as does his father, and Oskar in turn seems to get along with them (he is happy when he visits his father until a scene where one of his father’s friends joins them for a drink and there is an underlying tension that the viewer has no bearing on). Because of this, Oskar’s indifference to his parents feelings makes little sense.

It’s also not as much a deconstruction of genre convention as say The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, U.K.,1973) which defied the clichés of Hammer Horror to create something far more terrifying. It twists our expectations more then reversing them, but this leads to some nice little touches such as Eli sleeping in a bathtub covered with towels and sheets rather then a coffin, and sweets making her sick. There is also a thankful lack of sex, the eroticism of vampire‘s being lost on me, and replaced instead with Oskar’s underlying sexual awakening that’s never dwelled upon (It‘s implied that Eli, whilst not overtly sexual, is probably far more knowledgeable on the subject than Oskar) .

It probably will deservedly become a classic (it is already number #192 on IMDB.com’s Top 250, not bad for a year old Swedish art house film), but I worry people’s expectations may be too high, as mine probably were. Still, it’s flaws are far outweighed by it’s inventiveness, it’s depth and respect for the characters and they way Alfredson presents the story, using calm and restraint. It is intelligent, original and quite remarkable in it’s way and one can go as far as to say it has to be seen.