Let The Right One In was the Swedish precursor to Matt Reeves’ horror success, Let Me In. So, are we picking Låt den rätte komma in because we’re some bunch of pretentious film snobs? Nope, it’s because I’ve seen this version, but never got around to the U.S. follow-up. Although it seems likely you’d do well to watch either, or both.
Based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In tells the deeply quiet and gentle story of a friendship between a 12-year-old boy, Oskar, and a girl who looks much his own age, Eli. Eli is new to the area, and moves into the apartment building next door to Oskar, and the two begin to form a relationship, despite Eli’s opening declaration that they could never be friends. Eli, as you might have guessed given the nature of this collection of films, is also a vampire, which somewhat complicates things—especially as she needs blood, and the adult man she lives with, Håkan, is failing to secure her any.
What follows is the most stunningly calm and evenly paced piece of cinema, in which the snow is as much of a character as any of the people. It’s a film that’s about childhood, about bullying, and about friendship, before it’s about vampiric dismemberment, but it does this without pretensions, without thinking itself above the genre, and also with plenty of vampiric dismemberment. Years before the breakthrough of “Scandi-noir,” Let the Right One In embodied all of its defining features of understated severity, brooding quietness, and dark, dark humor. — JW
