I fell in love back in 1992: Bram Stoker’s Dracula was released, and I became a fervorous fan immediately. I was awed by Gary Oldman’s performance as Dracula / Vlad Tepes, I swooned at the sexually charged tension in the film, Winona Ryder charmed me with her feverish portrayal of Mina, I even forgot to be bothered by Keanu Reeve’s unchangeable face of “Whoa!”. Had they made a whole line of eyeliners / body glitter / rubber bracelets stamped with Dracula’s face and name, I would have been all over that shit (and broken my parents’ bank accounts).
I swear: I swooned for Gary in this getup. John Lennon shades included. LOL
The film also sparked an interest in all things vampire: books that ranged in quality from the classics (Bram Stoker’s Dracula itself) to the inane, fan-fiction-like dreg (I Am Dracula comes to mind), movies that gave way to other horror films (it started with Tale of a Vampire, but it gave way to other subgenres like zombies and demonic possessions), the best goth attire I could muster (which wasn’t much, given my budget and my permanent location on a tropical island), etc. Suffice it to say: I breathed, ate and lived on vampires. Big fan. BIG.
Then I outgrew that phase (sort of) and became interested in other things, but vampires held a special place in my heart.
Later came the onslaught that killed that little place in my heart: Underworld disenchanted me of the possibilities of bringing vampires to the modern world … Twilight simply did it in. Suddenly vampires were nothing to be feared or revered: they became sullen girls and moody teenagers with the odd craving for blood – a perfect ad for Hot Topic. The hordes of teenagers grasping at the shreds of the last XS-sized t-shirt of Edward Cullen were the nail on the coffin. Working at Hot Topic did no good to my perception of vampires as a literary figure of legend. Having Edward, Bella and Jacob peering out of the Twilight merchandise for hours at a time was nothing short of unnerving and nauseating.
..having to fold all the shirts every night and fix the merch display every 20 minutes didn't help either..
I eventually watched Twilight out of sheer morbid curiosity: that’s two hours I’ll never get back. It had its salvage points. They will never be enough to salvage the whole movie. Nor the series. Much less the book dynasty. Fuck you, Steph Meyer!
So it was with mild trepidation that I sat down to watch Let the Right One In, a 2008 film from Norway. From the get-go, you realize this is not the Teen Movie, Vampire® Edition crap that Twilight has been able to pull. The mood sets itself slowly on you: it’s dark and soft and gentle, yet terrible in all of its horror. Being a vampire here is not a matter of beauty, sexuality or glamour. The vampire in this story is a 12-year-old girl that travels around with an adult companion everyone believes to be her father (later on we realize he’s not). She’s not breathtakingly beautiful, nor does she prance around in stylish clothes and trendy accessories (yeah, Alix, I’m looking at you and your crappy crushed velvet choker, you stupid, vapid twat!). She’s a 12-year-old girl who got caught with this “disease”, a curse to bind her forever to a crippling hunger for living blood. She’s enlisted the help from an older lover / companion who kills and collects the blood for her so she won’t have to go out and get it herself. When he fails, she reacts like any child would: bratty, petulant, childish. There’s no infinite benevolence to her, just as there’s no abyss of evil in her soul. She’s just what she is: an eternal little girl.
Her counterpart in this movie is Oskar, a little kid who’s bullied constantly at school and has issues of his own at home. He’s got no friends at all, and has an intense desire to strike back at his tormentors. He is, by all means, a regular 12-year-old kid. When he meets vampire girl Eli, he finds in her the uncomparable comfort of kinship: someone who might understand, who seems like she’s been there, someone to keep him company. Their relationship evolves slowly and sweetly – nothing like the “Ooooh I can smell your twat from here! I wanna eat you!” stint from Edward Cullen. Keep your pants on boy! Just as slowly as the relationship evolves, Oskar starts suspecting Eli is a vampire through observation and clues from her odd lifestyle.
I swear this is the way it really went!
Another thing that caught my attention was the feeding process. At first Eli has her food delivered to her, but as her companion fails more and more often, she’s forced to get her food herself. I’ve seen a whole myriad of vampire attacks on screen: most of them are sexy and lustful, or macabre and cruel, maybe even funny. All of them have one thing in common: the vampire is mostly relentless and gains 100% satisfaction from sucking the lifeblood off another. Eli shares none of this with them: she’s overwhelmed time and again by the murder she’s committing. On one hand, she’s satisfying a hunger that, if left unbridled, affects her to the point of changing her physical appearance (the hungrier Eli is, the more sickly she becomes); on the other hand, she’s incredibly aware that she’s sinking her teeth into another life. The first kill scene is heart-wrenching at portraying this ambivalence. However, little by little, kill after kill, she becomes more comfortable with what she has to do.
Let the Right One In stayed with me long after the credits rolled. It had been a while since I had been haunted by a movie such as this. The film’s greatest value and strongest asset is that the figure of the vampire isn’t portrayed as a monster or as a sexual predator (much less as a high school heartthrob). Vampirism isn’t glamorized the way we’re used to see it; we see first and foremost the little girl in relation to the little boy – all that awkwardness of the first relationship, the sweetness, the intensity, – and then we see the vampire: a sickly girl who has no choice but to feed on others to keep herself alive. Human relations take a front seat in this film: leave the glitter to the idiots, the kids in LTROI will pull your heart through the wringer.
…and you may have noticed, but I couldn’t stop thinking of how crappy Twilight was in comparison. Wait, no, there is no comparison. Let the Right One In is a movie that will most likely prove to be a timeless classic. Twilight is like a shitty version of Sixteen Candles (all respect to Mr. Hughes), but with fangs … wait, no! Scratch that …
