Sometimes one has to be reminded that there are other ways to tell a horror tale than the ones insultingly force-fed to us by Hollywood for audiences with short attention spans.
The terrific, stark and touching Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In is not afraid to take its time, letting story, characterization, atmosphere and dark image soak in, creating a visceral and even moving experience.
By comparison, the typical Hollywood slasher filmmaker is an excited teenage boy rounding third base, dousing us in bloody payoff before the opening credits have finished rolling.
The ingredients in Let the Right One In are simple (the title refers to a vampire's supposed inability to enter a home unless invited). A bullied, lonely and ostracized 12-year-old boy named Oskar (Kare Hedebrandt) finds precious solace in his friendship with a haunted-looking 12-year-old girl named Eli (Lena Leandersson), who shows up regularly at sundown at a dilapidated playground near his home. (Sundown being just after school, this being Sweden in winter. Think Edmonton in January, although the bleak cinematography is more evocative of Northern Ontario).
Eli is a vampire. As she says, "I'm 12, but I've been 12 for a very long time" (director Tomas Alfredson occasionally peels back the mask and discomfitingly shows her as an old woman in a child's body). She has been largely spared the trouble of having to bite people due to the efforts of her father-figure Hakan (Per Ragnar), a serial-killer who desanguinates his victims for her benefit.
Trouble is, Eli and Hakan are newcomers in a small town of sullen drunken locals who are suspicious of all newcomers -- let alone ones who act strangely while towns-
people turn up dead and drained of blood. Hakan's efforts to carry on his work inconspicuously are ultimately as futile as Eli's to be invisible. It isn't long before she is left to her own vampiric devices, even as her feelings for Oskar deepen. Loneliness keeps them together, but the reality of their situation and the separateness of their private hells ultimately dooms them. Both Hedebrandt and Lena Leandersson are marvelously affecting in that minimalist Nordic acting style.
The bloody payoff stuff is there, the wall-crawling and flying, the vampire bursting into flames under sunlight, a decapitation and an impressive depiction of what actually happens to a vampire if it enters a home uninvited.
And yet, a movie with no small amount of blood (and some wicked revenge turned against the school bullies -- only one of whom is actually remorseless) manages to evoke sympathy and a weird sort of ennui-driven pathos. Eli and Oskar are a love story with all the subdued passion and subtext you can expect from a Swedish auteur.
This Halloween, if you're in the mood for a change of flavour, I recommend cold and gothic. Let the Right One In is the right one.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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