Let the Right One In

I went to the Sunset Laemmle 5 last night and caught the 9:55 show of Let the Right One In.

There's been huge buzz in town and online for this movie, so I was jazzed to catch it. You don't get too many Swedish vampire movies these days.

Since Dracula: The Un-Dead has been a big part of my life for a while, and especially lately, I've given thought to what makes vampire stories/movies so enduring and multi-faceted. I think the core of it is the fact that you can add vampires to any given genre or sub-genre and create something new. Even Bram Stoker's Dracula is basically a Victorian romance... with vampires. I bring this up because Let the Right One In is probably the first "coming-of-age movie with vampires" movie I've seen. No, scratch that, you could throw Lost Boys in there, but it's still more of a teen movie than anything. Here, the kids are twelve.

The movie's about this wimpy kid named Oskar growing up in Stockholm in 1982. He gets picked on by evil bullies and has no friends, so he spends a lot of time hanging around by himself on a jungle gym in the courtyard of his apartment complex. He's gotten his hands on a hunting knife and, when we meet him, he's working up the courage to use it on the head bully.

One night, he's out there stabbing a tree and calling it names, practicing for the big day, when a 12-year-old girl named Eli asks him what he's doing. Oskar turns around, and she's standing on top of the jungle gym, wearing nothing but jeans and a shirt even though it's the dead of winter.

They become friends. And that's where the rubber of the story hits the road...

Let the Right One In was directed by Tomas Alfredson, and it is beautiful. Mad props to the DP Hoyte Van Hoytema. It's based on a novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, a book I'm gonna read. He also wrote the screenplay and got sole credit, which is rare. (Well, rare in Hollywood).

This movie does a brilliant job of creating night in winter. It made me think of Chicago. There, dealing with darkness and cold is a fact of life for half the year. But I've only experienced that twice since moving to LA, once in Montana in December and once in New York in early March. I miss it and I don't. Let the Right One In nails it to such a degree that I was pulling up tons of memories of tromping through snow at midnight, and watching the movie became a very visceral experience.

In that regard, it reminds me of 30 Days of Night, which I liked a lot.

It also reminded me of Near Dark, in the very grungy and real-world way the story deals with vampirism. The word "vampire" is only used once, and at a key moment. Also like Near Dark, it touches on how fucking boring it is to be a vampire sometimes... we get a scene where Eli is just sitting around with her cards and puzzles, and earlier she cracks a Rubik's Cube in record time.

There's an aspect of Fright Night, in that both movies kinda have the same logline: A vampire moves in next door. Again, Fright Night is a teen movie.

It also plays like a gender-reversal of Twlight. But, again, teen movie -- one of the most original things about Let the Right One In is the age of the main characters. We've seen permutations of this story with high school-aged characters, but never pre-teens. Oskar is really still a kid. The closest analogy might be Cronos, though it's still not a direct match, as the girl in that movie is maybe eight, she's a little kid.

And while I was watching the film, I was thinking of Gun Crazy. Because to love a vampire is to love someone who is an addict and a serial killer, and is thus qualifiable as insane. Eli lives with an older guy. Like the other characters, you think he's her dad -- and he might be. As the story progressed, though, I started wondering if he just wasn't the "original Oskar," a kid who fell in love with a vampire, and just kinda hung around until he was worn out. So even though the relationship Oskar and Eli have is kinda sweet, there's also a back beat of sick dread in watching this kid get drawn into her orbit. There's a moment in act three when Eli saves his ass. I was glad she showed up, but at the same time I kinda sank in my seat, thinking: "Damn, now he owes her." And it isn't played as a heroic beat... after the shit hits the fan, they just sit there facing away from each other.

She is still a vampire, and this ain't a swoony teen romance like Twilight. I think this kid is fucking doomed.

On a cool side note: like I mentioned, Let the Right One In keeps it very real and pragmatic, but it does maintain the more fantasy-vampire rule that they can't come in unless invited, hence the title. We've seen that before, it's a trope. But this movie finally answers the question of, "What if a vampire went inside without being invited?" Oskar even teases her, asking if there's a force field or something. She's like, no, I can come in, but watch what happens when I try...

The movie's already been picked up for remake, with Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) directing. I really liked Cloverfield, so... while I'm not convinced the world needs a remake, it could be in worse hands.

Despite that, keep an eye out online. Watch the original first if at all possible. This is a great film.