Let the Right One in is the most pretentious vampire movie I’ve ever seen. I mean it— where others have consistently championed this film for being a “fresh” and “modern” take on vampires, I see only a fairly endearing fairy tale grotesquely contrived to “serious” proportions. All in the name of art I suppose.
It’s certainly impressive on a technical and artistic level—there’s no questioning that. Director Tomas Alfredson’s shot composition is largely concerned with overbearing urban environments. There’s a clear emphasis on architecture, particularly the sharp unforgiving angles of buildings and windows. The camera rarely moves, and the colors are largely high contrast. It’s a cold and sterile world inhabited by cold and sterile people. The visuals are indicative of the genre: not so much a vampire film, but rather a kind of 21st century love story that happens to have vampires in it. The focus is on the context and not the subject matter.
It’s an interesting choice, but one must ask: if the vampire element is largely incidental, then why bother? Why not just tell a love story? I can’t see any reason why the core friendship between the two leads is dependent upon one of them being a vampire. I have to admit, though, that my favorite parts of the film were, by far, the straight up horror portions where vampire canon is fully realized in gritty reality. For example, the hanging of a victim upside down to maximize blood drippage, or a totally rad spontaneous combustion brought on by the wrath of the morning sun. I liked these instances for their special effects prowess and their visceral gross factor, but again, cool as they are, they’re almost entirely incidental to the story.
I found Let the Right One In unsatisfying both as a horror film and a love story and yet I’m reluctant to call it flat out boring. I was never enthralled in it and I even had to shake myself awake a time or two, but still, I have to say that there’s definitely something to seeing a child vampire decapitate a thug and throw his head into a swimming pool.