Let The Right One In

If you want to show someone the differences between Hollywood "product" and European "films" then you could do far worse than host a double bill consisting of Twilight and Let The Right One In. Both deal with adolescent vampirism, but whilst the former aims directly at the teenage market, and in particular female emos, the latter deals with the subject in a very adult fashion.

Now there must be zillions of boring pieces of academia about the differences between the Yank and Euro methods of filmmaking, and all of them more than likely come to the same, let's be honest, lazy conclusions. It's not always the case that Hollywood takes the slick, commercial approach whereas Europe looks to make art, do a double bill with Dogma and Spain's Day Of The Beast to see this point proven, but in the case of these two teen bloodsucker tales those theories stand up.

Let The Right One In follows twelve year old loner Oskar who befriends who he thinks is a fellow twelve year old girl, Eli, who has moved in next door. What follows is a difficult tale, full of long pauses (well it is Swedish so Bergmann was going to cast a shadow over it) and ambiguities. This is a film that revels in not telling you what's going on. There are hints, mainly visual, but for the most part you're left to try and work out for yourself what's going on. It means that there are many different possible readings of the film, none of them strictly right or wrong, as a cursory glance at the IMDB forum for this film (SPOILERS APLENTY SO DON'T CLICK UNTIL YOU'VE SEEN IT) will testify. From interviews it even appears that the scriptwriter John Ajvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the novel that this is based upon, and director Tomas Alfredson don't see eye to eye as to what certain scenes mean. As a result it's a film that's worthy of much thought but will frustrate many as well. To discuss some of the surprises contained in this film here would ruin them. It's best just to go and see it.

Let The Right One In is a haunting, beautiful, dark, creepy, violent, charming film totally at ease in its Euro-centric eccentricities. It is a thought provoking study of loneliness and friendship and brings much originality to vampirism, cinematic or otherwise. It is the absolute antithesis of Twilight and you should be thankful that's the case.