Let the Right One In

Directed by Tomas Alfredson

Written by John Ajvide Lindqvist based on his novel

Kåre Hedebrant ... Oskar
Lina Leandersson ... Eli

Rated R
Runtime: 1 hr. 54 min.

An apartment building courtyard covered in snow. A boy stabs at a tree with a knife, imagining it's the bullies at school who torment him. The camera tracks around him to reveal a girl standing atop a jungle gym.

It's a simple shot, a horror film convention. The monster revealed, standing in an unusual place, watching a character, oblivious to their presence. At the same time that we react to this shot as we've been programmed to, it stays just long enough for us to consider it and realize that the threat we often feel is, if not absent, subdued. She looks at the boy not with hunger, but with curiosity.

It's these paradoxes that rule the movie. Horror scenes happen between schoolmates and love scenes are played in the midst of blood. Horror film conventions are employed, but never as short cuts. They are used as they were originally employed: to underline the story being told.

That story involves Oskar, the boy stabbing the tree, and Eli, the girl standing atop the jungle gym, a vampire. Oskar lives in the apartment complex and is looking out his window, again imagining a stabbing, when Eli and her father arrive in a taxi.

The heart of the movie is Oskar and Eli's courtship. It is tentative and sweet. Innocent on his end. Guarded on hers. He asks how old she is. "Twelve more or less." How could it be more or less, he wonders and then when asked his age answers with years months and days.

In the realm of the movie, her vampirism is metaphor within their relationship and reality outside of it. One of my favorite scenes is their conversation after he's discovered she's a vampire (itself a remarkable scene; terrifying, but not as you may suspect). She knocks on his apartment door. We've learned before that he must invite her in, but are not told why. Feeling betrayed in learning her secret, he refuses to invite her in. She enters anyway to horrifying results. It's a startling portrayal of that moment in relationships when the warm feelings are in danger of evaporating and we're forced to consider this person before us.

The success of the movie is dependent on its two young actors. Kåre Hedebrant as Oskar is very good but Lina Leandersson as Eli is amazing. Makeup has helped a great deal (has a 12-year-old ever looked so tired?), but she does convey an aged quality. Even her voice sounds as if it has been used for perhaps centuries.

Earlier in my review, I've taken to task films that use shots as cheats. That's not to say shots can't be used to create atmosphere and mood. But that can't be in place of an actual movie. Director Tomas Alfredson and his technical team have created an amazing atmosphere that creates another level to an already fascinating story. So often, snow in films conveys isolation, and while it does so here as well, it also is very comforting. Like a pillow has covered the ground. It even makes the courtyard, a location I wouldn't normally think to spend time, somehow comforting.

While I want to encourage people who may not usually see a vampire movie to see Let the Right One In, I don't want to lead you into the theater thinking there won't be gruesome moments. There are horror elements outside of conventional horror camera shots. Eli must feed. It's this need and its encroachment on their relationship that eventually forces the characters and the movie to reconcile the metaphor and reality. Again, much as in real relationships when they must be defined in terms of real life.