#4. Let the Right One In (2008)
(director: Tomas Alfredson; starring Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson)
Genre is an important tool in storytelling, but many filmmakers working today misuse or abuse genre, and as a result we have cineplexes stuffed full of genre movies that are, for lack of a better word, generic. With Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in), Swedish director Tomas Alfredson shows us how to appropriately use genre (in this case, the vampire/horror mythology) to elevate what would otherwise already be a powerful film about adolescence, social isolation and forging human connections in even the most bleak and despairing of environs. Oskar is twelve years old, picked on by the bullies at school and has no friends of his own. In secret he could violently take revenge on those bullies, if not his entire lonesome, frost-bitten world, but lacks the resolve to do so. Eli is the new girl next door… she is twelve, ‘more or less’, and also maybe not a girl after all. Eli actually does kill, frequently with graphic violence, although simply out of necessity for her to survive. Eli is a vampire. She bring with her a human servant, or ‘keeper’, that helps to carry out many of her necessary tasks. Events conspire so that he does not survive for too long, leaving Eli in need of a new keeper. As it happens, Oskar is in need of a real friend, and someone to help teach him how he can live out his violent fantasies. From this point, the story blooms into an affectionate young romance, one that is born out of tragedy, and while the credits may roll on a hopeful note that a real relationship has been forged between the two friends, we still secretly know given Eli’s identity that it will eventually end in tragedy as well. Maybe in five years, maybe in fifty. But isn’t that how most relationships are, vampire or not? For the protagonists, that still might not mean it’s not worth going through if, for the moment at least, they can share a little bit of warmth in the middle of all the dark, cold snow around them.
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