Review: Let the right one in
iView Author: Priyankar Bhunia (Mumbai, India)
Email: bpriyankar [at] gmail.com
Review: Let the right one in
Cast:Lina Leandersson (Eli), Kare Hedebrant (Oskar)
Directed by: Tomas Alfredson
Dark looming Gothic castles. Black cloaks. Fanged teeth. Immortal blood-sucking creatures of the night. That’s what vampires are supposed to be. Right down from creepy, silent Count Orlok of Nosferatu to the latex clad campiness of Underworld. We have seen it all. Or at least I thought so. Till this Swedish import came knocking and delivered a straight-up sucker punch. Picking elements from different versions of Vampire mythology, it delivers its share of gore. At the same time, it is a sublime romance as well a haunting study of ‘eternal’ alienation.
The first time Eli sees Oskar, he is frenziedly plunging a knife into a tree, shouting ‘Squeal..Squeal like a pig’. Like any 12-year old cruelly bullied by his classmates, he dreams of exacting brutal revenge. But it’s just that. A fantasy and nothing more. Eli, dressed in a flimsy shirt and pajamas, stands behind in the snow. She tells him that she has moved in next door and follows it up by announcing that she can’t be friends with Oksar, just in case he’s wondering. And then she walks away. But the next night again she’s there and offers her help in solving the Rubik’s cube.
As a tentative friendship blossoms between the two lonely kids, we see Eli’s father packing strange equipment into a bag. Soon he has strung up some boy upside down in the woods and is draining blood into a plastic container. Till he’s surpised by two old ladies and a dog. When he returns home empty-handed, Eli goes ballastic on him.By this time it is obvious that Eli is a vampire. Her father might not even be her actual father. But being Dracula’s kin is no fun. It’s an anguished, cursed existence. Eli is only twelve. As she reveals to Oskar afterwards, she has been twelve for a long time. And will continue to be. Instead of enjoying candy or playing with dolls, she kills. For the basest and most essential of needs…survival.
The story gets grimmer as it goes ahead. Encouraged by Eli, Oskar finally finds the guts to strike back at his bullies. Only to have worse retaliation in store for him. As for Eli, when the corpses start piling up, it’s merely a matter of time, before her secret is discovered.
Shot beautifully in the snow clad suburbs of Stockholm against a backdrop of bleak whites and bleached blues and greys, the movie creates an atmosphere of lingering dread in the tenderest of scenes. The horror is allowed to gradually emerge from the disturbing implications of the premise rather than through clich'©d tricks of the trade. Violence is hinted at obliquely with a surreal feel to the bloodiest of scenes.
What this movie does is not so much reinventing the genre as freeing it from its from fantastical, anachronistic trappings. It delves deep into dark recesses of the adolescent psyche and deftly explores the resident fears and rage. This is precisely the kind of unconventional genre movie which Hollywood can never make. It can only dish out a screwed up, sanitized remake as it has been doing for Japanese and Korean horror movies during the last few years. And it is planning to do so according to certain reports. That’s something I will never understand. The urge to take a perfect piece of work and mash it up into something unrecognizable. But getting back to the movie, this wonderfully twisted and sweet little horror flick is something that will stick around in your head for weeks afterwards
Tags: Kare Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Tomas Alfredson
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Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
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Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
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Watched this movie, a month ago. It was an experience in itself, not a typical vampire story. Beautifully shot and acted..def would recommend this one!
Where did you catch this movie? Got hold of a dvd? I’ve been wanting to watch this too for some time now.
yes, it was a nice movie;Quite different from hollywood treatment of vampires(dracula,B grade movies or Underworld series).Also miles aprt from russian vampire series(nightwatch and daywatch).I had just read ur review and downloaded it from the internet.The cast were good especially Eli.It reminds me of Pan’s Laybrinth in subconscious.Worth downloading.I appreciate ur review very much and thanks priyankar for recommending this movie.
@ Sachin, It got a limited release in Vancouver, BC (just one screen).
A must-read interview with the director:
http://twitchfilm.net/site/view/nifff-2008-let-the-right-one-in-interview/