“Let the Right One In” - Film Review
Review by Tyson Stewart: Let the Right One In
(Screenplay by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Dir. Tomas Alfredson. Perf. Kare Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson. 2008.)
Who would have thought the Euro art film renaissance would come in the form of a teen vampire flick? But it has. Here are filmmakers totally in control of their craft. It is a horror film and the great thing is we don’t mind the manipulation that goes on—the film’s style of Less is More prevents the kinds of condescension that are the mainstay of mainstream horrors. From the first lines (“Squeal like a pig! Squeal!”) on the film maintains a perpetual suspense and a disarming confidence.
The setting is an apartment complex in the dead of Winter in Sweden. Oskar, a 12-year-old boy, is a target of bullies. Eli is a strange girl who doesn’t go to school and sits on a fucked up jungle gym without shoes on at night. They soon start talking and become friends. Eli gives Oskar advice on how to handle his bullies. Oskar deals with the boy that gives him the most trouble in a way that seemed like the best solution. Meanwhile, Eli deals with her own problems—basically, she has a bizarre need of blood and lots of it. Their relationship grows at a natural pace and the acting (by Kare Hedebrant as Oskar and Lina Leandersson as Eli) is tremendous too.
There is a real evolution in terms of how he looks at her. From a casual demeanor to a childlike obsession with deeper undercurrents that signify a brutal resistance to the adult world’s sheer banality, Oskar’s falling in love with her comes at the sublime cost of falling out of society. Moreover, this is a cruel world full of drunks (Oskar’s father) and bullies. In a Nietzschean turn, Eli’s victims have a purpose that they otherwise wouldn’t have had.
The moments of action are very successful because the filmmaker shows only what is necessary for story comprehension and thus carry much potential. The perspective of the viewer matters enormously in these moments. There is a shot in the pool scene, for instance, that allows the viewer to imagine practically 80% of the action. Generally, much isn’t seen directly. Eli’s flying is never shown. And better yet, a whole lot isn’t explained, like the presence of the egg in her barren apartment or when Eli starts bleeding everywhere because Oskar failed to be polite by not asking her to come in. This Less is More principle doesn’t work like other horror films, i.e. Signs or The Blair Witch Project.
The meaning is never in question in these films. But here, the filmmaker controls and manipulates, to build suspense, and then avoids a full control of the meaning of other things, thus giving the audience member room to build the meaning. It is a more complex style of filmmaking. I would label it a mix of the Hollywood formulaic coupled with a slipping of autonomy from the director toward the audience member. The film is completely effective because it gets in you and you get into it: a truly vampirist act: cinema as bodily exchange. Another filmmaker that does this is Robert Bresson, who the filmmakers may be referencing when Oskar taps on the wall to communicate with Eli—this is reminiscent to how the inmates communicate in Bresson’s prison flick A Man Espaced. Bresson’s shots elicit a surplus of connotation, often not showing the action but gesturing toward it through sound or other creative means.
Let the Right One In may be my favorite fiction film of 2008, but it has nothing to do with its totality of vision. In fact, it doesn’t have a singular vision at all. It is too clunky (the last scene on the train is pure fat and evaporates all exuberant energy) and exploitative (it can’t resists certain gross-out shots) in parts to assume a stately perfection of vision. The complexity remains in the give and take of the filmmakers—and this is why it is an accomplished horror film that harkens back to the best tenets of European art cinema.
March 20th, 2009 at 9:21 am
A very good reveiew! It made the number two spot on my films of 2008 list. So damn good.