The vampire movie comes out of the dark. By JACOB POWELL. (contains spoilers)

COULD THIS be the best vampire movie since Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (1987) or Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake of the classic Noseferatu? Directed by Sweden’s Tomas Alfredson, Let the Right One In defies simple genre description, combing vampire horror with strong elements of social realist drama, coming-of-age romance, and psychological thriller to create a film that is complex, layered, and broader in range than its “vampire movie” trappings might at first suggest.

Set in winter in a small town in Sweden, Let the Right One In follows the daily struggle of 12-year-old Oskar; a social misfit and loner. He seems to resignedly soak up the bullying he receives from boys at school and his broken family situation appears to have left him, often, to his own devices. Mum’s at work a lot and though he enjoys days spent with his father, Oskar sometimes seems low on dad’s priority list. So Oskar spends his time alone, trawling the snowy courtyard outside his apartment building and collecting newspaper articles of various violent crimes or mysteries that have occurred in the local region. A pall of heightened, youthful loneliness and isolation surrounds him, almost palpable, that is until he meets Eli.

A girl of about his own age, Eli has moved with her father into the apartment adjoining the one Oskar shares with his mother. The two meet one night in the courtyard, each a little awkward and uncomfortable; wary of the other. Their friendship begins with a series of these after dark rendezvous through which they begin to build a tentative trust, sensing in each other kindred spirits. One night Oskar gifts Eli his Rubik’s Cube – something she has never seen before – and later he then teaches them both Morse code so that they can communicate through the wall between their homes. Eli convinces him to stand up to the bullies at school – to fight fire with fire – and doesn’t balk at his pent up frustration and hurt. At first Oskar isn’t suspicious about the few oddities he notices about Eli: that she never feels the cold, that she doesn’t appear to go to school, and that she sometimes smells noticeably strange. He is used to being thought of as a little strange himself. Not until he sees her virtually rabid response to the dripping of his cut hand – when he attempts to make them share blood in a kind of friendship pact – does he realise that she is in fact a vampire. And this is where his philosophical woes begin again and his world becomes more complex than it was for those sweet few weeks.

One unique thing about Alfredson’s film is that he almost sidelines the vampire issue. He doesn’t paint Eli as some kind of grotesque evil who glories in causing pain and misery, or feels any sense of genetic superiority – as is often the case in the vampire genre like in the David Slade’s recent 30 Days of Night. Neither is she wracked with guilt about having to kill, as is Brad Pitt’s Louis in Neil Jordan’s 1994 adaptation of Anne Rice’s novel Interview with a Vampire. She simply takes it as a fact of life that she requires blood to survive; she doesn’t kill needlessly but when the hunger consumes her she must sate it. This depiction of her serves to both make her a character you feel you can connect to, but also gives the film a much darker undercurrent as the filmmakers are ever drawing you to overlook disturbing acts of violence perpetrated upon random people. And this is exactly the dilemma Oskar finds himself in: the girl who has become his closest (and only) friend is a vicious killer. But in a world where his sense of self-worth has been slowly stripped away, this fact matters less than their shared sense of isolation and growing emotional bond and so, like the audience, he simply attempts to ignore the disturbing realities in front of him.

Eli’s ‘father’ sees this blossoming relationship and disapproves, but he is getting too a little old to take care of Eli and realises she will need someone else in her life. The part of this film that is hardest for me to figure out is whether Eli actually cares for Oskar in the way that he has grown to care for her, or whether he is being consciously groomed to play the role as her lover/protector, or some mix of both. The director happily leaves this and many other points unresolved and ambiguous.

Another thing that struck me in a good way is that there is very little exposition; Alfredson preferring to focus on the interplay of relationships and for the audience to infer what they will from the facts presented. A minimal knowledge of popular vampire lore seems assumed – like the fact that being exposed to direct sunlight is harmful to a vampire, that they are extraordinarily strong and agile, that they must be invited into a room before they can enter, down to smaller details such as not being able to eat regular food – but this knowledge is not necessary to enjoy the film or understand the narrative.

Occasionally, the John Williamsesque score proves to be a little jarring and out of place. However, at other times – like in the prelude to the opening scene with the credits – the choice of background sounds (in this case, silence) adds a noticeable depth to the visual aesthetic.

The spare visual tone of the movie and stark winter setting of the small town and surrounding woods and frozen fields unite with deliberate, steadily paced camera work to give a haunting and mysterious tenor to the picture, reminiscent of the work of the late Fabián Bielinsky (Nine Queens, The Aura) who brought an almost contemplative aesthetic to the crime caper genre. Both Alfredson and his cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema must be congratulated on a noticeable level of restraint in a genre that usually opts for the sudden shock of action through fast cuts and fleeting (almost subliminal) images of monsters perpetuating violence. Conversely, Let the Right One In plays out in an open and purposeful fashion – we see all of the details of the various attacks form the setup to finish and we even see other characters witnessing the details of the crimes. The filmmaker builds tension by what he doesn’t address, what lies behind the apparent clarity of what we are seeing, rather than by giving tantalising flashes of detail. And yet there is a palpable thread of tension running through the entire film, like an over-wound guitar string on the verge of snapping. You never feel like you can relax into the story and there is an undercurrent that something is not right but the director never overtly explains what this might be. The temptation is to just enjoy the romance and the sense of solace the two kids in each other without thinking too much about the uncomfortable sensation lurking in the background.

An utterly engrossing film, Alfredson has put together a visually, narratively, and thematically gripping piece of cinema that will surely endure as one of the classics of both the vampire genre and as a study of the negotiating pitfalls of childhood. Let the Right One In is the best thing that I have seen at this Festival (thus far) and is a film I would rue missing. Get to a screening if you can.