Fantastic Fest '08 Review. Let The Right One In
Being a huge horror fan I can tolerate most of the sub genres within it’s whole and within reason. But one sub genre I can barely stand is the vampire film. I guess it’s the over saturation of neo goth lesbian bullshit that seem to be released every week by a group of emo friends who have read far too much Anne Rice for their own good. So finding a relevant vampire film these days is like finding a needle in a haystack.
Fortunately film festivals have a way of filtering out the crap and after a stellar trailer and a few promising write ups I was eagerly awaiting to see the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In.
Oskar is a pale, scrawny weakling, a child of divorce and constantly being bullied by his class mates. He spends his time collecting crime reports from the newspapers and fantasizing about killing his tormentors while brandishing a knife. So a pretty morbid kid all in all.
One night an older man accompanied by a little girl move in to the apartment next door while Oskar watches from his bedroom window. Unbeknownst to Oskar however is that the little girl is a vampire and the older man her servant who prowls the night murdering innocent people, harvesting their blood for her sustenance.
I guess the years of traveling with a man who could be her great grandfather has made Eli, the vampire girl lonely and she starts to approach the equally lonely Oskar outside the apartment building and befriending him. The two form a loving relationship, with Oskar giving her a connection to the outside world and warmth that she hasn’t experienced in years, decades or centuries even and Eli teaching him about standing up to his bullies and be a man. When Eli’s servant is caught in the act of blood harvesting she has to go out on her own to feed and soon people in the neighborhood are starting to put two and two together.
Ok. How can I put this…This film is a fucking masterpiece. Pure and simple. While my taste for Swedish vampire films had been severely tainted by that piece of shit Frostbite from a couple of years ago Let The Right One In cleans the slate clean and then some. It’s hard to imagine that Tomas Alfredson comes from TV, kids TV even, with such a beautiful looking and paced film. His direction is simply superb, somber and deliberately paced, the acting low key and his images gorgeous. He never goes the obvious route with scares or shocks and but Mack so eloquently put it, it’s like talking quietly to a friend who then suddenly punches you in the face only to continue the conversation and lulls you in to a state of security before punching you again.
While this film on the outside is a vampire film, with all the blood letting that entails, it is a sweet love story between two lonely souls that find peace in each other.
Let The Right One In screens again on the 24th and you NEED to go see it.
