Morrissey, cult pop tunesmith of a cynical bent, is a man about whom opinion is divided in the thoughts of our nation. Some view him as the creator of great pop tunes, a voice of the despairing and an icon. Some view him as a self adoring tit. John Ajvide Lindquist saw the icon, enough to borrow a line from his favourite song Let The Right One Slip In for the adaptation of his successful, sometimes beautiful, sometimes shocking novel Låt den Rätte Komma In.
This was not a film anyone saw coming this side of the industry. Yes, vampires are unavoidable at present, as the TwiHards clash over the tortured franchise and aging frat boys still pine over their Buffy posters. But this is a Swedish film, adapted from a novel fraught with paedophilia, drugs and alcoholism. Tomas Alfredson’s film is unashamedly violent, all the more jarring for being at the hands of a little girl.
And yet it became instantly cult, with the still of a pale young girl with blood dripping down her face becoming an image associated with one of the best films of the past decade. Critics poured on the praise, like the blood from the young man in the opening sequence, and audiences were more than happy to drink it down. So strong was the following for this low budget story of boy meets vampire, which grossed $100 million dollars in Europe and won four Guldbagge awards from the Swedish Film Institute, that the rights were snapped up by Cloverfield’s Matt Reeves, leading to a remake due out later this October entitled Let Me In.
Playing against a whitewashed background of 1980s Stockholm, Oskar is a quiet, isolated slip of a boy living with his mother. Tormented at school and with a questionable father, Oskar is mutilating a nearby tree when a haunted girl in a cotton dress catches his attention. The friendship between Oskar and Eli is one based around sheer childlike innocence; Rubik’s cubes and Morse codes, dancing around lounges and tapping on windows. Eli tells Oskar to stand up to his peers. Oskar asks Eli to be his girlfriend.
This playground love is captured by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema through careful framing, with the sort of thoughtful, timely shots that reflect Kurosawa’s black and white features of the forties of fifties. It’s also a vital relationship, as it sears through the matter of fact violence that lays the foundation for the rest of the film.
This is not malicious killing spree in Let the Right One In; it’s a necessity of survival. As Eli drinks from a local man’s throat and snaps his neck, she cries. As her guardian Håkan (Ragnar) strings up a boy and drains his blood there is no flourish or torture, just a simple need to provide for the girl. As Eli feeds the noise she makes is one of a tortured animal, and she frowns heavily upon Oskar’s want to hurt his attackers when she is forced to hurt to sustain herself.
Those used to the heady action and pace of Hollywood’s answer to the vampire genre may initially struggle with Let The Right One In. This is a film that takes time to establish the snowy scope of a small community and the relationships that exist there. There is little use of music, no pacey editing and the violence, with the exception of a stomach churning crescendo is clean and precise, with no Tarentino style fountains of blood.
Everything about this film, right until the final turning in events, is timid and a little desperate. A string of violence at the hands of a little girl is hardly an original concept, but this not a child bent on revenge. Her only motive is survival, and her regret makes her fascinating.
Actors Lina Leandersson and Kåre Hedebrant are chillingly mature in conveying Eli and Oskar’s outsiders, Eli especially is hard to convey as she is clearly older than her 12 year old body. The connection between the characters is one that happens instantaneously. It isn’t one charged by the hormonal urges of the Twilight saga, but rather a plain curiosity and a need for company, like working out the puzzles and codes the two children play with. When Oskar asks Eli to cross into his home without being invited it’s a simple game of chicken, one which crumbles when he sees the grizzly consequences.
It is a love story, but not quite. A thriller and a horror, but not quite. The reasoning behind Let The Right One In’s success is its defiance of genre. Like Eli’s defiance of death, or Oskar’s defiance to love the undead, this is a wonderfully bizarre break from conformity, blood soaked and highly affecting. Matt Reeves has got a lot of people to impress.
