Tally-Ho, Tricky Treaters! It’s amazing to think that, thanks to the combined efforts of both Hollywood and a whacko Mormon woman with the writing ability of a cocktail onion, a whole generation of (largely female) Halloweeners have grown up thinking that Transylvania is just the place where most of Europe’s cement comes from, that meadows are more likely to attract the romantic un-dead than bumblebees and that a hot guy who sparkles and doesn’t want to sleep with them is a vampire, rather than a gay guy. This Halloween, SBS is offering us lucky punters a particularly salty, blood-red treat in our goodie bags. Yes it involves an unusual relationship between tweenagers, one of whom is a vampire, but the only meadow on display is the snow-covered one where the vampire’s victims are buried, and the only sparkling to be seen comes from the moonlight catching all the arterial blood spraying around when the pint-sized pre-teen predator gets her snack on. So let’s leave the lion and the lamb to sort out all their baggage whilst we all reclaim the night for the bat with LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (Sat Oct 9, SBS-10pm)
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (aka LAT DEN RATTE KOMMA IN) is a 2008 film from Sweden based on a frankly quite dull book by john Ajvide Lindqvist. However, the film turns out to be one of those rare beasts (see also ANGEL HEART, BLADE RUNNER, BLISS and LORD OF THE RINGS) in which the film is better than the book (please don’t send any outraged letters from Hobbits to this address). It rated like gangbusters in Sweden and in various horror-movie festivals around the world, as word got out that a vampire film had been made in which the vampires in question aren’t beautiful, are most definitely not ‘vegetarians’ (I guess you could call them ‘Humanitarians’, albeit in a strictly gastronomic sense) and have the proper vampiric reaction to sunlight (ie screaming, catching fire and exploding, rather than looking like they’d just bought stock in a Maybelline advert). The film quickly became the unbeating heart of a new crop of vampire films that were ‘post-TWILIGHT’, but LET THE RIGHT ONE IN remains the best and most original of the neo-nosferatu genre. So much so that the inevitable has happened, and an American remake is hitting cinemas towards the end of the year; so do yourself a favour and catch the original version tonight before Hollywood drains it of its creativity and originality and leaves its anaemic corpse behind much like Edward does to Bella in the next TWILIGHT film (or at least he will once RPattz reads my script).
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN introduces us to Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) a pale young boy of twelve who lives with his mother in a housing estate in Stockholm. Oskar is bright but introverted and very morbid (he’s fascinated by forensics and mortuary practices- he’d really thrive if he was adopted out to the Addams Family). Oskar’s intelligence and weirdness make him the target of bullies at school, and when we first meet him, Oskar is planning a particularly nasty revenge involving an object that’s usually found in either a cutlery drawer or a turkey carcass at Xmas (expect this scene to be deleted from the American remake faster than you can say ‘Columbine’).
Over the next few nights, Oskar meets his new neighbour, twelve-year old Eli (Linda Leandersson), who lives with her ‘Uncle’ Hakan (Per Ragnor). The two kids form a strange but close friendship, until one night Oskar comes home bleeding from his latest encounter with the bullies. Eli is both outraged at the abuse her friend puts up with- teaching him to fight back; and is also drawn like a magnet (a creepy one) to the blood in his wounds.
It’s not long before we find out that Eli has been a twelve-year old girl ‘for a very long time’- much like the cast of 90210 before her, Eli looks young but is actually ancient- she’s a thousand-year old vampire, and Hakan is actually her Day Protector. When she is forced via the daylight to stay inside her apartment, Hakan guards her sleeping corpse (strangely enough, ALSO like the cast of 90210) and also procures blood for her in not-exactly-consensual blood drives amongst the local populace.
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is a superb little film that manages to capture the awkwardness of growing up different (in Oskar’s case) or veeeery different (in Eli’s) in a small town very well. It’s also one of those rare films that doesn’t sugar-coat what a hellish experience school can be for kids who don’t fit in. Eli and Oskar’s relationship though based in murder and chaos, still remains remarkably sweet and innocent, if you ignore the fact that one or both of them are frequently covered in blood that didn’t originally belong to them. After all the vampire films and lore stating that a vampire can’t enter a dwelling without being invited in first (hence the film’s title) it’s nice to see that this film also shows us the consequences of what happens if a vampire isn’t invited in first (surprise! It involves excessive bleeding!).
There’s even the ghost of a GLBT subplot revealed later on in proceedings, when Eli reveals that she wasn’t originally a girl- born a boy at least a thousand years ago, Eli’s body is so old that it has forgotten what gender it is supposed to be, and she is caught in a half-world between male and female, as well as child and adult.
You’ll probably go off donating blood for a long time, but snuggle up with a friend and watch it!
Gavin Pitts
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