I cannot adequately explain how good this movie is. It’s certainly the best movie I’ve seen since Synecdoche, New York. This Swedish masterpiece shows us how Twilight would actually play out if the characters acted like they truly existed and were not stuck in some tween emo fantasy. Sure, it’s a vampire coming of story, but there is so much else to see below this movie’s icy surface. No frame is wasted and each plot point serves the characters and not the other way around. Director Tomas Alfredson has crafted a beautiful, moving, chilling piece of work. His tableux are so expertly set up that you can feel the chill in the air and taste the tang of blood as its copper stench rises from the snow covered landscape. This is a subtle movie perhaps, but it is definitely no boring movie.
Set in Stockholm in 1982, Let the Right One In is about Oskar, a pale twelve year old boy who is routinely bullied and who is painted in lonely grays and off whites. His parents are divorced and you can see in his eyes that he is searching for some place to fit in, somewhere that he doesn’t feel abandoned. Enter Eli, a mystery who is even paler than Oskar and has a penchant for appearing out of nowhere. When Oskar asks how old his new friend is, Eli replies, ”Twelve. More or less…” Finally Oskar has met someone as lonely as he is, if not lonelier. So begins a relationship that is heartbreaking and (dare I say) life-affirming at the same time.
Make no mistake: this is a genre film; when all is said and done this is a vampire movie. It hits all of the familiar notes in that old song but manages to rearrange them into an entirely new tune. And the result may be one of the greatest vampire movies of all time. It’s neither camp nor overly romantic. Let the Right One In takes its subject very seriously and there is plenty of blood. Eli walks a fine line between pale flower and ravenous animal. And it’s that dichotomy that turns Oskar’s pre-adolescent crush into something poignant and poetic.
