Let The Right One In
by Tomas Alfredson
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Kare Hedebrant, Lina LeanderssonDirector: Tomas Alfredson
Brand: Magnolia Pictures
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Swedish (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); Swedish (Original Language); English (Original Language); English (Dubbed)
Format: Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 114 minutes
Published: 2009-03-01
DVD Release Date: 2009-03-10
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Model: 10173
Studio: Magnolia Home Entertainment
Product features:
- A fragile, anxious boy, 12-year-old Oskar is regularly bullied by his strongermates but never strikes back. The lonely boy's wish for a friend seems to come true when he meets Eli, also 12, who moves in next door to him with her father. A pale, serious young girl, she only comes out at night and doesn't seem affected by the freezing temperatures.Coinciding with Eli's arrival is a series of inexpli
Movie Reviews of Let The Right One In
Movie Review: This is the right one to let in (kick Twilight out the door).
Summary: 5 Stars
Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
When trying to convince my sister-in-law and daughter, both thirteen, to watch this fantastic film, at one point I got tired of trying to do so with my usual critical terms and just said, "it's Twilight, but good." Which, of course, scandalized them both, but when it comes right down to it, there are a great number of similarities between the two films' themes, but the execution is almost polar opposite. Film buffs will detect, for example, hints of Kieslowski in Tomas Alfredson's location choices. I defy anyone to say that about Twilight (and be able to back it up).
The plot should sound familiar, if you're in America (since it seems everyone in the country has either seen Twilight, read the book, or both): a young human falls in love with a young vampire, who returns that love, but realizes that a true match between them is impossible. Where Stephenie Meyer's sparkly vampires, on the one hand, want to be RomEmo and Juliet, it seems as if John Ajvide Lindqvist (adapting his own novel) simply said "hey, how about we write your basic love story, but give it an undead twist?" Ironically, the one that doesn't try so hard is the one, if either of them does, that will end up the classic. Oh, yeah, and Eli (Lina Leandersson in her first film role)? She don't sparkle. However, similar to Twilight, there's a scene where the human finds out what happens to the vampire during one of those times that are traditionally supposed to be bad for vampires. And, like Twilight, that scene is one of the movie's most memorable. But trust me, there ain't no sparkling.
I don't even know where to begin saying great things about this movie, so I'll start with the obvious: the two young actors playing Eli, the vampire, and Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant), her human friend. I absolutely, positively cannot believe neither of these two has acted in professional movies before this. They are absolutely perfect in every way. Oddly, they remind me of Jude Law and Elina Lowensohn in The Wisdom of Crocodiles, though the roles are reversed (and yes, I do mean to imply there's tension of a romantic nature between them), and despite my love of The Wisdom of Crocodiles, Leandersson and Hedebrant are simply flat-out better in this film.
Then there is Tomas Alfredson. Unlike his stars, this is not, by any means, Alfredson's first movie. Before getting showered with awards from around the world for this flick, Alfredson had already won both TV and movie awards, most notably for his 2004 film Four Shades of Brown. This is the kind of guy who would likely, were he in the American system, never even consider making a horror movie. But then, I'm not sure there's anyone like Alfredson in the American system. Who's the last director you can think of in Hollywood who made a TV comedy series, a movie spinoff, gritty dramas, and a horror film staring a couple of preteens? That sort of thing doesn't happen in America. And we are the worse for it. (And when was the last time you saw Kieslowski echoed in a horror film? Look at the building in which they live--if the two movies had been made in the same country, I'd swear it's the exact same apartment block that sits off to the side of the block where all the main characters live in Dekalog. And it's not just the building--it's the lighting as well.)
I've already mentioned John Ajvide Lindqvist's script, but I should do so again, because it doesn't matter how good your actors are, you have to give them something to work from. And this script? Genius. It's everything that, I think, Twilight wanted to be and failed, both book and movie, so miserably to be. Everywhere that Twilight is ham-fisted, Let the Right One In is understated. As a result, the relationship between these two characters feels far more real than that between Bella and Edward, for whom the world essentially stops in order for the two of them to emote. The big difference, naturally, is that Twilight is essentially a romance, and is written in the way Americans expect a romance to be written. Let the Right One In, on the other hand, is a drama that contains romantic elements. The love story is less important than the characters who are involved in that love story; Lindqvist's characters are gloriously three-dimensional. Lindqvist took a lot of care to bring his characters to life, and it paid off in spades. Eli and Oskar are two of the most endearing characters in modern film, to the point that when we see Eli doing the things she needs to do to survive, there's no real horror involved; we can sympathize with the vampire during the vampire's least human moments. (There's one scene in particular towards the end of the film where this is particularly powerful, but it would be the mother of all spoilers to tell you what it is. You'll know it when you see it, and like the scene I mentioned before, it's one of the film's best. The sympathy that Lindqvist has taken the time to build is, one hundred percent, the reason this scene works as well as it does.)
I could keep going. Once I'd made the Kieslowski connection in my head, I almost dug out my Dekalog review as used it as a template for this one. (This was the result of frustration; I've been trying to write this review for two months, and every time I've tried, it kept turning to mush. What finally made it gel was the other connection, to The Wisdom of Crocodiles. I can't believe it took me two months to see that.) It's one of the handful--at best--of movies I've seen since Dekalog that has had an effect anywhere near as profound. And the list of movies that would qualify contains a number of immortals (most notably Satantango). It's obviously far too early to consider calling Let the Right One In one of the best movies ever made. That hasn't stopped the machine that ranks the IMDB Top 250, where this movie sits at #190 as I write this. Time will tell if it becomes the classic it currently promises to be, but on a more local scale, I can remember few ten-best-of-2008 lists where Let the Right One In did not appear. The reason for this is evident; it is, in every way, a superlative achievement. In the time I've been reviewing movies, which now stretches over two decades, I have given a five-star rating to less than thirty films. This one joins the pack. *****
Summary of Let The Right One In
Oscar, a 12-year-old fragile and bullied boy, finds love and revenge through Eli, a beautiful but peculiar girl he befriends, who moves into his building. When Oscar discovers that Eli is a vampire it does not deter his increasing feelings and confused emotions of a young adolescent. When Eli loses the man who protects and provides for her, and as suspicions are mounting from her neighbors and police she must move on to stay alive. However when Oscar faces his darkest hour, Eli returns to defend him the only way she can.The enduring popularity of the vampire myth rests, in part, on sexual magnetism. In Let the Right One In, Tomas Alfredson's carefully controlled, yet sympathetic take on John Ajvide Lindqvist's Swedish bestseller-turned-screenplay, the protagonists are pre-teens, unlike the fully-formed night crawlers of HBO?s True Blood or Catherine Hardwicke?s Twilight (both also based on popular novels). Instead, 12-year-old Oskar (future heartbreaker Kåre Hedebrant) and Eli (Lina Leandersson) enter into a deadly form of puppy love. The product of divorce, Oskar lives with his harried mother, while his new neighbor resides with a mystery man named Håkan (Per Ragnar), who takes care of her unique dietary needs. From the wintery moment in 1982 that the lonely, towheaded boy spots the strange, dark-haired girl skulking around their outer-Stockholm tenement, he senses a kindred spirit. They bond, innocently enough, over a Rubik's Cube, but little does Oskar realize that Eli has been 12 for a very long time. Meanwhile, at school, bullies torment the pale and morbid student mercilessly. Through his friendship with Eli, Oskar doesn't just learn how to defend himself, but to become a sort of predator himself, begging the question as to whether Eli really exists or whether she represents a manifestation of his pent-up anger and resentment. Naturally, the international success of Lindqvist's fifth feature, like Norway's chilling Insomnia before it, has inspired an American remake, which is sure to boast superior special effects, but can't possibly capture the delicate balance he strikes here between the tender and the terrible. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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