Let the Right One In (aka. Låt den rätte komma in), (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
Let the Right One In is a very strange little movie. On one hand, it’s a not too unusual vampire narrative (newcomer arrives in a small town, is only seen at night, people start dying, strange habits, suspicion, innocent is bitten and turns into vampire, friend of the bitten sets out to kill the vampire, confrontation), but that’s not what this movie is really about.
Oskar is 12 years old, his parents are divorced, and he’s bullied at school. He lives in the sort of snow-clogged Scandinavian suburb of brutalist brick buildings and nowhere to go that I remember from growing up in Norway a few years later, and dreams of violent revenge on his tormentors. It’s while he’s stabbing a courtyard tree with a knife, pretending it’s one of the bullies, that Eli shows up, a girl who looks to be about his age. She’s just moved in to the apartment next to his with a man who might be her father, and there’s something strange about her. For instance, she perches in high places and jumps down effortlessly, she can’t feel cold (she says she must have forgotten how to), and she tells him without prompting that she can’t be his friend.
Of course, they become friends, and then boyfriend and girlfriend, as it becomes more and more obvious that Eli isn’t a little girl at all, although, as she says, she is 12 years old, she’s just been 12 years old for a long time. Håkan, the man Eli lives with, is her companion of sorts, and tries to procure blood for her to drink, but he’s a bungling killer, and Eli needs to take things into her own hands.
It’s a very original story, or at least a very original mixing of several familiar and very different stories, and it works surprisingly well, the low-key coming of age love story punctuated by a few bursts of sometimes extreme and shocking violence, and the supernatural elements handled matter-of-factly.
Visually, it’s also well made, although the cinematography is not spectacular, there are plenty of visual details to take note of. The whole thing is largely shot with extremely shallow depth of field, at times it’s extreme enough that Eli’s huge eyes are in focus while everything below the middle of her nose is a blur. Shallow depth of field seems to be a trend in horror movies, possibly coming out of Japan, where bokeh has long been a place to hide the horrors, complimenting the more traditional darkness of American and European horror. Eli’s particularly often treated to being partially out of focus, as well as behind panes of uneven or frosted glass, underlining the insecurity about her slippery true identity.
There’s a lot to be analyzed in this movie, and it deserves it, but more than anything it’s a very well-made and engaging film. Personally, I can identify very strongly with Oskar, and I think most everyone who grew up in the 80s, especially in Scandinavia, at least knew someone like him. In general, the characters are strong and recognizable, from the benign dead-end neighbourhood drunks to the well-meaning teachers and detached parents. I’ve been there, or somewhere very much like it, and I only wish I had found a vampire girlfriend willing to kill for me.