Mini rant Disclosure. I just came upon details concerning a remake of this movie intended for American audiences. It will be helmed by Matt Reeves of Cloverfield fame.
I am tired, completely fed up with this need to spoon feed the American people with custom made stories. One of the lamest excuses to "Americanize" this film is that the film is "too Swedish" is scope (duh). Go ahead, worry the American public will never get over the culture shock of people eating "smorgas" instead of burgers and playing "soccer" instead of football. In the mean time throw aside one of the most endearing- yes that is the word, tales about human nature concocted in this decade and turn it into horror spam for the masses. Please, pleeeease, people in Hollywood, allow us for once to discover, to marvel and enjoy a movie that surpasses the expectations of it's genre to convey a rare gift: a character study in loneliness, gut wrenching fear and the lifting power of love. What the hell is so inherently Swedish about that?
I am also tired that in their effort to sell an idea, studios and ignorant people in general conspire to make us believe that just because some stories have elements in common, they are exactly the same. You know where I'm going with this people. I will personally make a kebab of the next person that dismisses this movie as the "Norwegian Twilight." Off my chest, now to my review...
Do not make yourself believe otherwise, just because I used the word endearing in the beginning, it doesn't mean this is not a genre movie. It is as conventional and shocking as vampire movies are meant to be. There is gore, violence and buckets of blood. These are vampires from Eastern European Tradition. Undead with aversion to sunlight, relics, a knack for solving puzzles, even if it stops them in their tracks and a relentless need to sustain themselves on human blood at any cost. In fact, the title Let the Right One In plays with the notion of vampire folklore that prohibits the undead to enter places uninvited. However, it is the intelligent use of all these plot devices that makes this movie worthwhile.
Long before the EMO revolution, vampires were perceived as raw manifestations of the ID, insatiable in more ways than one. Selfish creatures spawned in the bowels of hell who lived for the kill. These monsters were a craze in the eighties, at the peak of the " greed is good" sentiment. Intelligent film makers saw beyond the obvious choice of declining European aristocrats and used the image of the vampire to embody a metaphor for the deepest, darkest, guiltiest pleasures a society on the verge of hedonism had to offer- The Hunger, anyone?
Just like metal gave way to boys in flannel shirts singing about life as it is, vampire lost their punch in the nineties, they became, if anything, beautiful, alluring creatures at odds with their immortality, and filmmakers portrayed them as such. As of late, it's even worse, they have been sugarcoated.
Let the Right One In, however, rescued vampires from the trappings of sentimentality, bringing them out into the open as the dark mirror they are meant to be. It is a genre story that dares, once again brush against the human psyche. Once again, horror is not there solely for shock value. There are things to learn about ourselves, if we wish to dare to.
It is a story aligned with the Universe of Guillermo del Toro, in fact, it was not difficult to think about The Devil's Backbone. Oskar, the protagonist keeps the story grounded onto a familiar and painful reality: the trials of growing up as an outcast. Eli, even as a preternatural being, superior to Oskar in wisdom and strenght is haunted by her youth and apparent frailty, condemmed to never reach physical adulthood. It is the tragic story of a boy who cannot wait to grow up and a girl who, a long time ago was forced to come to terms with the idea that she never will. In this case, the vampire is devoid of a soul, yet still human enough to yearn for contact and the human being is willing to do anything, even leave reason behind in order to achieve the same.
The cinematography is not complicated, nevertheless it is effective, the barren, never ending white wasteland the characters move about is but a shadow of their emotional isolation. Most sensitive people might find it shocking that the main characters were so young to begin with. Once again, in the hands of intelligent filmmakers the urgency of blood and the innocence of love is beautifully woven. Children, after all are willing to believe, undergo and accept circumstances that would be just bizarre to grown ups, Oskar's is a world in which wonder and terror can coexist naturally.
All in all it is an intelligent, well thought film that is both unapologetic of it's use of genre as it is uplifting... yes, this is a feel good vampire movie, even if you know that in time, everything that can go wrong, will be, for the moment, in the brief expanse of perhaps a human lifetime, love will conquer all.
The quote:
"Be me for a while, be me" - Eli
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