Let the Right One In

[November 12th, 2008]

With all their hype and legions of fans, the teenybopper vampires of the locally filmed Twilight are poised to take a massive bite out of the box office next week. But purist vampophiles are advised to deny the beautiful teens and welcome Let the Right One In, a Swedish import that hits the heart by going for the jugular with a tweenage love story that barks, bites and registers on countless emotional levels.

Based on an international bestseller by John Ajvide Lindqvist, Right One focuses on Oskar, a lonely 12-year-old towhead in suburban Stockholm tortured by bullies and living with a detached single mother. Dreaming of revenge on his tormentors but too timid and gentle to seek it, Oskar soon meets Eli, a strange girl who moves in next door with an older man she calls father. Oskar takes a liking, but notices some eccentricities in his only friend, particularly Eli’s musty odor, withdrawn attitude, aural glow and nocturnal tendencies, and the fact cats aren’t too fond of her.

Oh, and there are also the bodies that begin turning up, and Eli’s “father’s” habit of serial killing and collecting blood.

Director Tomas Alfredson uses Stockholm’s snowy landscape to provide a gorgeous canvas for the bloodletting. But don’t be fooled by the film’s gruesome premise. While there is a bloodlust—both in its unflinching depiction of adolescent violence and the actions of its tiny predator—Let the Right One Inis a story of love and finding oneself that evokes About a Boy as frequently as it does Anne Rice. (The title is a Morrissey lyric.) Subtract the vampire element, and the movie would still function exceedingly well as a study of emotional isolation rescued by the entrance of a sympathetic soul, hammered home by strong performances by Kåre Hedebrant as Oskar and Lina Leandersson as the conflicted Eli. The young leads make it palpable, and Alfredson (poised to be a pastier Guillermo del Toro) breathes so much life into the stagnant genre that it’s impossible to pigeonhole the film as horror.

Films centered on children skate a thin line of exploitation, yet Right One’s dramatic exploration is thoughtful and never forced. It’s respectful throughout, leaving the audience to contemplate every element and make its own interpretation of the consequences of its characters’ actions. At once tender and terrifying, this Swedish movie isn’t just one of the better entries into the genre, it’s one of the most welcome surprises of the year. R.