Vampires stay young forever, but in fiction and movies, they’ve become old and tired—at least for those of us who don’t venture into the “Paranormal Romance” section of the bookstore (which I avoid like it’s North Korean airspace or the bra-and-panties section at Target). Seems to me that a good vampire story today ought to make the vampire almost secondary to another character’s progression. It also helps if the setting is grounded enough in realism that we doubt any supernatural presence until the evidence is laid out plain and unmistakable. The film should walk us down a dark street and not make us think about bloodsuckers at all—until two fangs get us right in our neck.
That’s how Let the Right One In does it at least, and it’s great.
It’s Swedish, snowy and full of the kind of dumpy, damaged people that you might see drinking the day away in a blue collar bar after clock-out time in a factory town. Director Tomas Alfredson goes out of his way to make sure that the only beautiful sights on screen are the winter exteriors. We’re talking zero glamour (and it’s refreshing). It’s the world of the film’s 12-year-old lead, Oskar, a bullied loner who lives with his family in a shabby tenement building. Oskar’s got one friend: the weird girl next door who only comes out at night, doesn’t go to school and is sometimes seen walking around covered in blood on the same night that one of the townspeople disappears. When you’re a young boy who likes a girl though, you can overlook things like that. No, the biggest problem he has with her is that she has no interest in being his “aw shucks, how cute” steady girlfriend. She draws clear boundaries between them UNTIL her “father” (or whoever that older man is who gets fresh blood for her) dies. All of a sudden, eager little Oskar starts to look better to her.
Along the way we get several gallons of blood, an acid-burned face, one of the best ever exploding vampire-in-the-sunlight scenes, a rare look at what happens when a vampire enters a place without being invited and some solid bully revenge. The smart storytelling takes its time, hooks us, and lets the actors breathe, which gives the violence extra impact. It’s a modern classic that proves that there’s still life left in the undead.
Based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist.