Let the Right One In (Lat den ratte komma in)

Let the Right One In, a Swedish horror/thriller based on a book by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who’s been described as Sweden’s Stephen King, has been at the Angelika, one of NYC’s arty theaters, all fall. The Angelika has pretty good taste. And no theater is going to keep a movie in their queue if it isn’t pulling in customers. So there was every reason to think this movie was worth seeing.

Rationally, I knew this, and yet…I couldn’t make myself see it.

Why? Two words that kept showing up in every synopsis: Bullying and Vampires. Ugh and blech, in that order. I really (really) didn’t want to see either in action. But, I finally ran out of things to see. Almost every theater in Manhattan is either endlessly showing all the Oscar nominated films, all of which I’ve seen (with the exception of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s “gifts” to us) or they’ve got Paul Blart Mall Cop on three screens. And, though I have willingly seen any number of really bad movies, that one has utterly no appeal for me.

So, dear reader, we went. (That would be me and Paul, my husband and movie sidekick. He’s my Alice.) And an eerier, cooler, movie I have not seen in a long time. Having just posted about my soft spot for sucky 80’s horror flicks like Halloween, I have to say, this brings horror movies to a whole new level. Sure, there’s The Ring, which I adored, and which, incidentally, scared the pants off me. But, with its Japanese revenge-theme, not to mention that the main victims tend to be high school kids, there’s still something of teenage/pop flavor about it.

Let the Right One in, which stars Kare Hedebrant as Oskar, a lonely 12-year-old boy who lives with his high-strung mom in a depressing apartment development in Stockholm, and visits his dad (who’s okay as long as he’s not drinking) on weekends. His co-star, is Lina Leandersson, as the gamine, sensitive, ferocious, vampire, Eli, who has been about 12 “more or less” for a long time. How long is never clarified—but we’re led to believe she’s actually quite old. Oskar, who is an innocent 12, never seems to entirely grasp this.

We’re never told exactly what happened to Eli, but based on intelligence from the movie (no spoiler, me!) I’m guessing she was bitten by a vampire at age 12, survived, but got stuck that age forever more. She was also stuck with all the vampire traits, i.e. an overwhelming thirst for blood, a rather thrilling agility, and an inability to tolerate light, among others.

There is shockingly little of the stereotypical vampire movie in this vampire movie. In fact there’s none, it’s directed as a real story, not a horror movie, which makes it that much bleaker and scarier at times. Here’s a bit of an interview I found online with the author of the book, who also wrote the screenplay. In it, he talks about what he was trying to do in the film:

“I wanted to approach my subject completely seriously and absolutely reject all sort of romanticized notions about vampires, or what we’ve seen earlier of vampires, and just concentrate on the question: If a child was stuck forever like, in a 12-year-old existence and had to walk around killing other people and drink their blood to live – what would that child’s existence really be like? If you disregard all the romanticized clichés. And then it struck me when I wrote the book that it would be an absolutely horrible existence. Miserable, gross and lonely. And hence, the way Eli is depicted.”

There IS a bleak and melancholy feel about this movie. There’s Oskar’s loneliness, his game attempts to take it all in stride, and, of course, the hideous bullying I didn’t want to see. (I’m now afraid to send Henry to school…Okay, I was already afraid to send him. Now I’m NOT sending him.) And there’s Eli—emaciated, dark circles under her eyes, drawn, in spite of herself, and despite the fact that she knows it’s a bad idea, to Oskar’s tentative attempts to befriend her. Did you ever think you’d be touched by the sight of a vampire, bent intently over a Rubik’s Cube? I sure didn’t.

Somehow, as Paul and I both remarked later, you find yourself rooting for the vampire, who’ve you’ve seen—with your own horrified eyes—do some pretty bloody things. Of course you worry about Oskar’s fate, throughout, too—that’s part of the tension.

This is a real movie about childhood loneliness and friendship, with a vampire theme thrown in. (By thrown in I don’t mean it’s haphazard…it’s obviously carefully crafted…it’s that it’s not JUST about the blood and gore.) Because the writer, as well as the director, Tomas Alfredson, went for the real story, instead of the special effects cliché version, I found myself utterly drawn in and moved.

I can’t believe how much I liked it, in fact, and now, of course, feel stupid for avoiding it for so long. (Incidentally, there are a number of people who are incensed that it got snubbed by the Oscars in the best foreign film category…that’s how good it is.) The only thing that’s spoiling it for me is the fact that, as I noted in an earlier post, there’s an American version coming out soon. That, my friends, is bound to be the cliché Lindqvist was trying to avoid.