Let The Right One In

My latest Lovefilm rental was Let The Right One In (or to give it its proper title Låt den rätte komma in). I’d missed a lot of the press when it had come out so all I knew about it was it was a Swedish vampire film that had garnered widespread acclaim on its cinema release.

My first viewing of it wasn’t entirely successful – like a dimwit I got distracted and started to look at something on the computer at the same time as watching it. Note: this is never a good idea when watching films, especially subtitled offerings – as well as missing subtleties in the film, you miss half the dialogue whilst you’re taken aback by some post or other on the computer screen. Computer work and films should only be mixed when watching anything that Michael Bay has had a hand in.

Anyway, I sensed I’d missed out, so watched the film again the next day, this time with full concentration. And I’m glad I did – it’s a thoughtful atmospheric film offering far more than the odd chilling moment.

The plot follows the burgeoning friendship between a lonely and bullied 12 year old boy Oskar, and Eli, on the surface a 12 year old girl, but in response to Oskar asking her if she is really 12, she replies with: “Yes. It's just I've been twelve for a very long time”. How this relationship develops forms the crux of the film, though clearly the number of locals turning up dead in this cold Swedish town plays its part too!

The way the horror aspect is of a dual nature (the horror of the supernatural aspect along with the horror of a childhood spent in the shadow of bullies) may mirror a film such as Carrie, but the style is about as far from that film as can be. You feel that if Ingmar Bergman had made a modern day horror film, it would have looked a lot like Let the Right One in. Arguably all Swedish films have to undergo comparison with the father of Swedish cinema (mainly by lazy critics and now me), but I think here there’s something in it, given the focus on the slow building of character and atmosphere. This is not your quick shock, flashily edited horror film, relying on the viewer’s patience and attention to see it through and is all the more rewarding for it. I guess the closest English language film I can come up with as a quick comparison in terms of mood and tone is Don’t Look Now, but even then there are major differences.

Anyway, once the film draws you in, there’s little chance of it letting go – the penultimate scene contains a simple meeting of the eyes that is quite startling in its impact given all that has gone before and elicits all sorts of emotions.

What with this film and offerings such as The Orphanage (El orfanato) is Europe taking over from East Asia as the making of the world’s best horror films. I say “horror” in the loosest sense – there’s an argument to be had that Let the Right One In is more love story than horror film. Whichever way you look at it I think Europe is certainly outdoing the US at the moment when it comes to “horror”– I can’t remember the last American film of the genre to have had such an impact on me.