Swedish director Tomas Alfredson’s Let The Right One In is a movie for which the h-word feels desperately insufficient.
In fact, it’s not even vampirism itself that drives the plot. It’s less about Eli’s compulsion to survive by feeding on the sodden denizens of the Stockholm suburb of Blackeberg during the 1980s than it is her neighbour Oskar’s (Kare Hedebrant) quite desperation to survive horrendous school bullying and the loneliness that comes from being an awkward, bright kid raised in a broken home of Sweden.
Efficiently stripping back his own, superbly constructed novel, scripter John Ajvide Lindqvist focuses on Oskar’s pre-adolescent plight, the pain and almost ritual humiliation he has to endure at the hands of his spiteful schoolmates, to the degree that once Oskar becomes cognisant of his new friend Eli’s true nature, it emboldens and affirms rather than terrifies him; disturbingly - but understandably - their relationship, delicately and wonderfully realised through astonishing performances from Hedebrant and Leandersson, only deepens as they become unified in alienation. Despite flowering with a gruesome act of violence, and considering the chilling implication of what Oskar might really mean to Eli, not to mention their physical ages, there’s a strong sense of romantic triumph, even if the cost is unthinkable.
There’s an affable chorus of Blackeberg inhabitants: rumpled and middle-aged just scraping by - until they become horribly entangled in the bloodletting events. And they’re not just convenient victims, either. Instead, they provide an astute reminder that life is too complex to be reduced to heroes and villains, good and evil - even when there’s a vampire involved.
Why divert the film with a visit to Oskar’s father? And how did Eli become a vampire in the first place? Lindqvist’s book holds the answers but they’re not fully revealed on screen and that only adds to the movie’s attractive mystique, to its strength as a wholly naturalistic take on the vampire genre and one which, somehow even in these vamp-packed days, has plenty of surprises.
In fact, it’s not even vampirism itself that drives the plot. It’s less about Eli’s compulsion to survive by feeding on the sodden denizens of the Stockholm suburb of Blackeberg during the 1980s than it is her neighbour Oskar’s (Kare Hedebrant) quite desperation to survive horrendous school bullying and the loneliness that comes from being an awkward, bright kid raised in a broken home of Sweden.
Efficiently stripping back his own, superbly constructed novel, scripter John Ajvide Lindqvist focuses on Oskar’s pre-adolescent plight, the pain and almost ritual humiliation he has to endure at the hands of his spiteful schoolmates, to the degree that once Oskar becomes cognisant of his new friend Eli’s true nature, it emboldens and affirms rather than terrifies him; disturbingly - but understandably - their relationship, delicately and wonderfully realised through astonishing performances from Hedebrant and Leandersson, only deepens as they become unified in alienation. Despite flowering with a gruesome act of violence, and considering the chilling implication of what Oskar might really mean to Eli, not to mention their physical ages, there’s a strong sense of romantic triumph, even if the cost is unthinkable.
There’s an affable chorus of Blackeberg inhabitants: rumpled and middle-aged just scraping by - until they become horribly entangled in the bloodletting events. And they’re not just convenient victims, either. Instead, they provide an astute reminder that life is too complex to be reduced to heroes and villains, good and evil - even when there’s a vampire involved.
Why divert the film with a visit to Oskar’s father? And how did Eli become a vampire in the first place? Lindqvist’s book holds the answers but they’re not fully revealed on screen and that only adds to the movie’s attractive mystique, to its strength as a wholly naturalistic take on the vampire genre and one which, somehow even in these vamp-packed days, has plenty of surprises.
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