Monday, November 24, 2008

Let The Right One In

by Scott Gleine

On a weekend in which the teen vampire flick Twilight took America's adolescent cultural zeitgeist by storm faster than you can say "High School Musical," I ventured to the theater to see a much different take on the bloodsucker genre.  Coming all the way from Sweden, Tomas Alfredson's Let The Right One In is a thrilling yet poetic piece of cinema that is a welcome and refreshing addition to an aging genre that seems to be regaining popularity.  It is also, despite a few missteps, one of the best films I've seen all year.

Oskar, a lonely 12 year-old boy who is frequently bullied at school, strikes up an unlikely friendship/first romance with Eli, the strange new girl who just moved in next door.  She is also twelve, "more or less," but unlike most kids, she only comes out at night, walks around barefoot in the snow, and needs human blood in order to survive.  This is really the only plot information needed going in.  There is a hell of a lot more that I'd love to discuss, but it's better to not know much else.

Set in the dead of winter, the film does a tremendous job of creating a cold, eerie atmosphere that gives it a genuinely chilling mood throughout.  On top of that, Alfredson and cinematographer Hoyt Van Hoytema conjure up many memorable images that are relatively simple in construction, yet surprisingly powerful.  These elements mix nicely with the film's slow-building narrative that gradually becomes more suspenseful as it unfolds.

There is also a somewhat touching, yet very bizarre, tale of young love at its core.  It's obviously an unusual situation, especially when one takes into account that Eli is actually quite a bit older, just trapped in a pre-pubescent body.  But the filmmakers certainly don't force the romance between the two, instead allowing things to play out in such a way that the two sort of wind up needing each other.

Let The Right One In is not without its flaws.  In particular, there's a sequence involving some CGI cats that made me (and the rest of the audience) laugh a bit more than was probably intended.  The score is a little on the melodramatic side, and though I actually wound up enjoying the music quite a bit, I can see it being a bit much for some people.  And the film's finale, while highly entertaining and satisfying, feels almost like a tacked on second climax.  This is only a minor complaint, because it's still a wonderfully constructed and shocking sequence.  It's just one of those situations where it felt like the film had already ended, but then kept going.

Genre revisionism is something that all genres need in order to survive and continue to grow.  And while Let The Right One In certainly does hold true to many tropes of the vampire genre, it still manages to be fresh, unique, and exciting.  Seek it out and enjoy before an American remake comes along and sucks all the life out of it.  Pun very much intended.