Let the Right One In

Tomas Alfred­son has defied all expec­ta­tions. He’s tak­en the most self-reflex­ive of gen­res and re-invent­ed it with a sin­gle, stun­ning film. Unques­tion­ably sub­ver­sive, at times tran­scen­dent, Let the Right One In rein­tro­duces the vam­pire – that crea­ture of myth and mad­ness – to the real world. Gone are the clichés, replaced by a sto­ry of uncer­tain friend­ship and frag­ile love, of social real­i­ty and dark fantasy.

Based on the nov­el by John Ajvide Lindqvist, Alfredson’s film takes us deep into the heart of Sweden’s frigid sub­urbs. Blacke­berg, 1982; the cold set­tles like a steel weight, expelling warmth and life and hope. Scut­tling across con­crete streets, run­down peo­ple lead run­down lives – inmates in a frozen cell.

Oskar (Kåre Hede­brant) is a 12-year-old boy out of kil­ter with this world. So pale he’s almost translu­cent, so phys­i­cal­ly unim­pos­ing he’s prac­ti­cal­ly invis­i­ble, one strong snow­storm could blow him away. But escape is elu­sive for Oskar. Bul­lied at school, he buries him­self in a scrap­book of vio­lent mur­ders, friend­ship sub­sti­tut­ed for fantasy.

And then one night Eli (Lina Lean­der­s­son) enters Oskar’s life and changes it for­ev­er. Eli is… dif­fer­ent. Her hair is black and mat­ted, her face smudged with dirt. Only a thin pink shirt pro­tects her against the snow. ​“Don’t you feel the cold?” asks Oskar. ​“No,” she replies. ​“Why not?” ​“I think I’ve for­got­ten how.”

They meet in a shal­low pool of light cast by a street­lamp, a sick­ly halo thrown over a rust­ing play­ground. Out­side that light lurks the thick, unknow­able night, but inside Oskar finds some­one to pro­tect him from the world. Even though there are ques­tions about Eli he can’t answer. Even though a ser­i­al killer is stalk­ing the streets of his town. Even though the dan­gers of that dark night beyond the street lamp have already stepped into the light.

Adapt­ing his own book, Lindqvist has been forced to smooth out the kinki­er creas­es. Much of what’s per­mis­si­ble in print is sim­ply too extreme for cin­e­ma (like an attempt­ed-rape scene that would land the film­mak­ers in jail if they put it on screen). So com­pro­mis­es have been made – Alfred­son only address­es the novel’s homo­eroti­cism in a sin­gle shot, a blink-and-you‘ll-miss-it image that’ll leave you gasp­ing. Like­wise, Eli’s accom­plice, Håkan, a pae­dophile in print, now has a more ambigu­ous (even sym­pa­thet­ic) motive to explain his actions.

But if some of the book’s more con­ven­tion­al hor­ror ele­ments – its Stephen King moments – have been wise­ly excised, else­where it’s hard­er to explain why cer­tain mate­r­i­al has been left out. No ref­er­ence is made to the fact that Oskar wets him­self, and while it’s clear enough that he’s a vic­tim, it’s cru­cial that we under­stand the depths of his humil­i­a­tion before he meets Eli for his lat­er actions to ring true. But if the film is a more timid beast than the nov­el, Lindqvist and Alfred­son have large­ly suc­ceed­ed in cap­tur­ing its essence while tun­ing out its excesses.

Most impor­tant­ly, Alfredson’s film mir­rors the sub­ver­sive qual­i­ty of Lindqvist’s book. This is no ordi­nary hor­ror movie. In a genre that fetishis­es death, Let the Right One In is a film invest­ed with life. It’s an anti-hor­ror movie, a peri­od piece ground­ed in the strug­gles of social real­i­ty. When Lacke (Peter Carl­berg) and his girl­friend Vir­ginia (Ika Nord) dis­cuss nuclear hys­te­ria and the upcom­ing elec­tions, these aren’t just real life details (in 1982, a Sovi­et sub ran aground in sight of a Swedish naval base, and Thor­b­jörn Fälldin’s gov­ern­ment was on the verge of defeat); they’re the kind of details that pro­vide the back­drop to real lives. The town of Blacke­berg may be pop­u­lat­ed by drunks, drug addicts and two-time losers, but they aren’t just stereo­types wait­ing to be fed to the meat grinder.

So when it hap­pens, when this world lurch­es on its axis and the killing starts, you won’t – you can’t – dis­con­nect your­self from these char­ac­ters. Unlike films at the seed­i­er end of the spec­trum, you’re not invit­ed to share in the antic­i­pa­tion of death – idly won­der­ing how inven­tive or aes­thet­ic or excit­ing it might be – you’re forced to fear it.

This emo­tion­al matu­ri­ty bril­liant­ly strips the film, and the audi­ence, of its moral com­pass. With­out a clear sense of good and evil, Alfred­son is able to orches­trate our sym­pa­thies with mas­ter­ful mis­di­rec­tion. Yes, it’s manip­u­la­tive, but by the time the motive for the killing becomes clear, we feel both Oskar’s sym­pa­thy for the killer, as well as Lacke’s anguish for the victim.

That the film is able to enter such murky moral ter­ri­to­ry is due in part to the fact that it divests the vam­pire of its glam­our. How­ev­er con­flict­ed screen vam­pires have been, the image of the undead speaks to our most seduc­tive fan­tasies – pow­er, immor­tal­i­ty, sex­u­al­i­ty. But Let the Right One In flips that on its head. Not just because Eli preys on our assump­tions of inno­cence – who, after all, could fear a lit­tle girl? – but also because her exis­tence is a small, squalid and lone­ly one. Eli may be the first vam­pire you wouldn’t glad­ly trade lives with.

But if you’re going to intro­duce a vam­pire to the real world, soon­er or lat­er you have to address an awk­ward issue: what do you call it? Because we know about ​‘vam­pires’ – we’ve seen them in films – but nobody believes, nobody could believe, that they’re real. Not even if you saw one in an under­pass suck­ing blood from a corpse. And espe­cial­ly not if this vam­pire was your only friend.

By forc­ing his char­ac­ters to face the absur­di­ty, the impos­si­bil­i­ty, of what they see in front of them, Alfred­son deft­ly cross­es a fourth wall. It’s as if, by utter­ing the word ​‘vam­pire’ out loud, some taboo is shat­tered, and all the bar­ri­ers between the real and the unre­al, the pos­si­ble and the impos­si­ble break down completely.

Let the Right One In takes us beyond the com­fort zone of hor­ror, and per­haps that’s why it isn’t so much scary as dis­con­cert­ing. The fear of the unknown, the fear of the unseen, the fear of evil – all have been sub­tly under­mined. In fact, the film’s ​‘scari­est’ scene sees Håkan wash­ing a buck­et, tub­ing and fun­nel in his kitchen. There’s some­thing about his qui­et deter­mi­na­tion that’s far more dis­turb­ing than see­ing the same tools employed after he’s strung a young boy to a tree and cut his throat.

It’s this jux­ta­po­si­tion between the domes­tic and the dia­bol­i­cal that gives the film its pow­er. The class­room, the home, the local pool: these are the tawdry, tedious spaces of nor­mal life. That the word ​‘vam­pire’ should shat­ter their illu­sive sanc­tu­ary is like a phys­i­cal vio­la­tion. And if, on occa­sion, the scenes of vio­lence that occur here seem almost com­i­cal­ly inap­pro­pri­ate to the audience’s eyes, we’re sim­ply shar­ing the reac­tion of the film’s char­ac­ters, strug­gling to accept what they’re seeing.

At all times, Alfredson’s focus is not on the aes­thet­ic but the real­is­tic. Which is not to say that his film isn’t beau­ti­ful. It opens on an image of snowflakes falling like silent angels, con­jur­ing the icy oth­er­world­li­ness of this inno­cent, iso­lat­ed town. It’s these moments of beau­ty that lift Let the Right One In out of oppres­sive dark­ness. At it’s heart, after all, it’s a love sto­ry between two peo­ple on the brink of child­hood; one learn­ing to reclaim it, the oth­er to let it go. It’s in those qui­et moments between Eli and Oskar that the real mean­ing of the film’s title is revealed, refer­ring to the heart, not just the home.

Odd­ly evoca­tive of Miyazaki’s Cas­tle in the Sky, this love sto­ry is all the more heart­felt for its fal­ter­ing, ado­les­cent uncer­tain­ty. When Eli comes to Oskar’s room one night, fresh from feed­ing, she climbs in behind him. Unable to see her face, he asks her to be his girl­friend. ​“Will any­thing change?” she won­ders. ​“No,” he replies. ​“Then okay.” As they lie there lis­ten­ing to Eli’s heart­beat, the film reach­es a moment of pure tran­scen­dence where inno­cence, hor­ror and love each dis­solve into the other.

Alfred­son and Lindqvist have craft­ed a mod­ern fairy tale that stands com­par­i­son with the work of Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­son and the Broth­ers Grimm. In its col­li­sion of fan­ta­sy and real­i­ty, dark­ness and light, love and loss, Let the Right One In has sim­ply swept aside the rest of the genre, and proved con­clu­sive­ly that hor­ror thrills don’t have to come cheap.