LEWIS!
* I contend that there has been a vampire film released every year since 1919, and whilst I contend this with no proof, I contend it with the same certainty that I could run a marathon. Its plain to me that vampires are an all pervading myth and one particularly suitable to cinematic representation. The special powers are pretty easy to represent (a bit of gas, a flip cut to a bat), and since the main power is charisma, its the monster vain stars most like to play. Look at Tom Cruise!
So with such a commonly represented fiend as the vampire clogging up our screens at least annually if not more, the challenge comes to make them interesting. Its a challenge often dropped, looking at endless rehashes of Dracula. And post Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s comprehensive deconstruction of all that is vampire, where is there to go? Well perhaps back to the well, back to the source. And I don’t mean Dracula, but rather folk tales about the others who move in and are a bit weird. Which brings us to Let The Right One In, a Swedish vampire film which is both thoroughly traditional and yet novel enough to be revitalising for the genre*. Because what has been lost in the gradual but absolute monsterfication of the vampire is that at its heart a vampire is seductive BECAUSE we want to be one. It is the great paradox at the heart of Buffy as soon as any the vampires were given any personality or agency. If vampires can choose to be evil, then they can choose to be good, and therefore a vampire is just a superpowered human with a dodgy diet.
Let The Right One In has all of its vampire signifiers down. Mysterious deaths, strangers in town and a overall gothic air which sits somewhat at odds with the nasty seventies architecture and snow. These vampires are cautious though, as we would imagined a persecuted minority to be, a father and daughter team taking their kills carefully (father draining victims for his daughter). This runs concurrently with the miserable childhood of Oskar, bullied at school, ignored at home, flirting with his own dramatic fightback to beat his bullies. And so disturbed murderous kid meets vampire kid and its love at pretty much first sight. He works out pretty quickly she is a vampire, but isn’t fazed. She is almost scared by his infatuation, she does not kill because she wants to, but she has to.
What Let The Right One In manages better than any other vampire film of the last twenty years is its atmosphere. It is, in itself, seductive. This is an ugly place full of pretty ugly people and you can see how in other circumstances this kid is on his way to a school shooting. Or will get over it, leave the town and never go back again. What this town doesn’t need is a vampire going around killing people, but it already feels pretty damned. All it has it pretty snowdrifts for this kid, and I kniow snowdrifts are less fun when you have to play in them every day. Its the modern day vampire story done right (at least Dracula AD 1972 is itself a period piece now). These are the kinds of cold, hopeless towns that vampires would haunt, who misses the marginalia. Which is also the message of its ending too, a curiously happy ending until you consider its actual meaning.
*You may have noticed I like to illustrate film pieces with foreign posters for the film. In France the film is called Morse. Less crosswords but about the same number of murders. It is a name that makes in some ways more sense than Let The Right One In, which nevertheless sounds spookier and is a Smiths reference, so therefore artier as well.
**If revitalising the genre means an American remake which will probably miss the core fo the film. This is not Twilight!
Pete Baran in Do You See /FT • Film • 253 views
haha i actually wrote a feature for nme lo these 25 years ago based on the contention that the rise of zombie movies had sharply displaced and downgraded the vamp movie (bcz the latter was now much less common than hithertofore) (zombies = mass politics; vamps = elite politics = my actual argt)
my research = counting the vamp movies listed year on year in the phil hardy horror films compendium — there really was a drop off in the early 70s for about a decade (possibly more but i was writing in the earlyn 80s)
i had reckoned w/o anne rice of course
I think there is something in what you say, and the abstracted political fears from the two monsters also make absolute sense. Zombie fear = fear of the masses (socialist/communist/lowest com demon proletariat, ver mob), Vampires (aristocrats, charismatic leadership models). And there has since been a rise in films which mix the two, seeming armies of vampires found in Underworld and 30 Days Of Shite.
But the very facelessness of zombie masses makes them an outsider monster, there is little to sympathise with (possibly the problem at the heart of all co-operative forms of politics, who just wants to be part of the mass?) Vampires have personalities which means they can be acted and inspired if not sympathy, interest.
i was required by the films editor to winkle in a preview reference to “Vamp” feat.grace jones as it was on at the london film festival the following week: of course it was miserably lame and dreadful
(films that use g.jones well = 0)
I was going to argue for View To A Kill, but Grace Jones is the third best thing in a third rate Bond movie so I think your point still stands.
(Two things better than Grace Jones in View To A Kill: the theme tune and the Golden Gate Bridge).
vtak is possibly the worst bond movie AND THEY ARE ALL BAD (except QoS obv, it is the Queen of the Damned of bond movies)
I liked the atmosphere of Let The Right One In very much – I just felt it could have done with a tiny bit more momentum. But it’s pretty good.
A couple of small things: is he her father? As he doesn’t appear to be a vampire himself, and she’s xx years old, then…
This was one of those films were the (to me) ambiguous period nature of the film was slightly annoying. Why is it set in the (early 80s?)? That seemed unnecessary.
Contrary to you and most critics, I thought the estate they live on looks absolutely fine. What’s wrong with it?
It looked about the same as the estate I live on! I guess there was something unsympathetically brutalistic about some of the courtyards and underpasses. But I guess it also is used (possibly crudely) as a metaphor for the cold harsh world that Oskar lives in. It fulfils all the functions of decent housing but lacks a certain homeliness, much like Oskar’s other relationships on paper are normal, but actually alienate him. Its the anti-Gothic I guess which makes it notable.
The 80′s setting was a bit weird, and barely alluded to. I guess its when the book is set.
(Spoilers)
I have a feeling that her “father” may well have been her previous “mate / lover / thrall”. (I think you may be right that he may not have been a vampire by her reaction when he gets caught). Which makes her reaction towards Oskar more interesting. He is groomed and eventually selected to take over that role – hence the ending.
Re 7 (Spoilers) Exactly!
“It fulfils all the functions of decent housing but lacks a certain homeliness”
That would capture my interior decor approach with great precision.
I liked the early-80s-or-whenever setting because it felt like a sort of ‘generic real childhood’ setting – it meant that Oskar wasn’t one of those pesky kids of today but was a child in the same way the viewer had been a child.
Also lack of internet, computer games etc meant that the only fun he had was going outside and a rubiks cube…
To answer a question about the “father” of Eli. In the book, Hakan was a former school teacher who had been convicted of being a child molester. And basically his life was ruined. His home was burned to the ground, and he basically became an alcoholic with no home to speak of. Eli encountered him one night when he was drunk, and sat down beside him. He did about what a child molester would do; he laid one hand on her thigh, but she didn’t push him away. She got up, took the vodka away from him, poured it out, took him by the hand, and told him that he was coming with her; she needed his help. So basically she “adopted” him. He had a place to live, money, and his job was apparently to perfrom certain duties for her, when she needed them done. It seems that most of the time all she needed was for him to pretend to be her father. Obviously, it would be difficult for what appears to be a 12 year old kid to do something like renting a place to live. Also, Eli would not allow him to take any of the usual liberties that a child molester might try to take. He might get an occasional kiss or hug, but that was all. That was the most difficult thing for Hakan; he was so close to her, and yet wasn’t allowed to get as close as he wanted. There was a hint that on occasion, he was allowed to occupy the same bed with her, and even to touch her, but that was it.
Another thing: Eli really isn’t a girl at all. When actually 12 years old, Eli was subjected to some kind of a bizarre blood ritual which eventually resulted in becoming a vampire. Not just castration, though. The complete removal of all sex organs in fact. So Eli actually was neither a girl or boy, as she explained to Oscar in the book.
Also, Lina Leandersson, who played Eli, had four different women to double for her in the movie. One actually dubbed all of her speaking parts (it was felt that Lina’s voice was a little too childish). Another did a short scene or two when Eli appears to be much older. Still another did her stunts. And the fourth apparently did the scene when Eli supposedly appeared nude (briefly) when Oscar observed the scars on her abdomen. For an 11 year old like Lina to actually appear nude would probably not be permitted, in Sweden nor anywhere else. At the very least, it would have set off a firestorm of criticism.
As for why the movie was placed in the early 80s. The most likely reason was that the author was about 14 at that time, and would have remembered what Sweden was like then. To me, the book was sort of like playing “fill in the blank”. Enough information was left out so that the reader could pretty much fill in the missing information any way he or she wanted. Anyone who hasn’t read the book should. It does fill in some of the blank spots the movie had. The problem of just about any movie based on a book is that the movie has to be made to fit in to a two hour time frame.
Cheers Gary, fill in the blanks is often one of the joys of this kind of movie, and I am not sure if the child molester (or indeed the lack of sex organs, does it matter – she’s a vampire) add much to what we have worked out. Sometimes books have to put too much in! (Leave The Right Stuff Out).
I think the movie benefits from the lack of clarity.
Eli’s minder is just one more unreliable adult, one who bungles both the murders seen on screen and who one suspects is responsible for the pair having to move in the first place. He and Eli in their apartment mirror Oscar and his distracted mother in theirs. The group of adults who meet in the local cafe are a bunch of small-minded losers and the teachers at Oscar’s school are no better.
Eli embodies the aggression which Oscar feels in response to his neglect by the ‘grown-ups’ and his bullying by the other children. Eli’s sexlessness is significant in subverting the tradition of vampires representing the release of suppressed sexuality. Instead she represents a state of eternal childhood, unblemished by adult concerns. Oscar too appears strangely sexless – his long blond hair and androgynous features may well be what make him a target for the more conventionally masculine bullies.
For another reading of the film go here:
http://kdotdammit.livejournal.com/1418922.html
I’m surprised no one has mentioned the movies one dodgy moment: CAT ATTACK!
I had completely forgotten the CAT ATTACK.
a better — bleaker — idea than the book’s backstory (as noted by gary): the old guy who you imagine is her father is her previous oscar, with her since he was her age
CAT ATTACK! so when cats drink vampire blood, they become…
i loved the look of the estate
(the version i saw was hooky and shonky and terribly dubbed: this did not spoil it)
things i loved: eli’s feral movement, the way she sometimes appeared in a weird part of the screen (the vampire in the original nosferatu always enteres the frame at an unexpected point…); her shame and confusion when she’d been feeding
the relationship between ruined scando-modernism — the social democratic utopianism sedimented into the buildings themselves (the school!) — and the sad broken humans who kind of infest it (people failed to live up to the best social ideals made available; vampires as a manifestation of this flaw in us) (people are kind but they are useless; even their anger is all turned inwards; we feed on ourselves)
the shame and confusion and essential privacy of the blood-drinking makes it very analogous to sex (feelings about which are surely going to come rumbling up on oskar any day now) – i loved the moment when lacke’s wife is looking at the two holes in her neck in the mirror and is totally ambushed by the smell of her own blood – she almost loses herself in a kind of sensual reverie – then gets a grip and stares at her reflection in horror
CAT ATTACK was possibly my favorite scene in the movie!