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I love the horror cinema. It's the genre that got me interesting in movies in the first place. But, in recent years, I've gotten more and more dissatisified and even felt removed from the scene. Between the jokey self-referential post-SCREAM films on one end to the torture porn on the other extreme, there really hasn't been much to catch my attention. Toss in smarmy "it's only a horror movie" put-ons, a surfeit of glossy CGI, gore for gore's sake and numbing repetition and the genre seems largely bankrupt as of late. There ARE exceptions - THE OTHERS, THE SIXTH SENSE, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and, of course, Asian films such as the original versions of PULSE, THE EYE, THE RING etc..
So, when I read all the acclaim (including from mainstream film critics) for the Swedish vampire film LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, I made a special point of seeing it. It's a very interesting, and, yes, serious, attempt. Atmospheric, moody and containing many good ideas.
++++++++++++ Mild spoilers ++++++++++++++++++
But, the script seems to have had a difficult time in transfering the novel. Trying to bring in as much of the novel as possible shortchanges some of the elements that are strongest in the film (the relationship between Oskar and Eli) in favor of subplots that aren't totally developed. Director Tomas Alfredson, with perhaps an eye to international sales, also stages a couple of CGI heavy sequences involving Cats and a hospital patient particularly, that drew laughs rather than shudders at the screening I intended. Swedish CGI aside, the scenes don't seem to be organically part of the same film that is such a carefully modulated character piece. More crucially, a critical revelation in the novel is so botched that I wager most of the audience never catches it -- even after seeing the entire film.
What is good is the rich setting. You practically can see your own breath in the air for one feels that you are in the wintry Scandanavian environs. Oskar and Eli's relationship is about as intense as you are likely to see amongst pre-teens in any kind of film (it will interesting to see how much of that sexual tension survives the U.S. remake in the works). It's so carefully constructed that the subplots do disstract, and the climactic ending (not the epilogue, which is OK, but unnecessary - see below) seems tacked on. The film has a more subtle, touching and devastating conclusion about 10 minutes before the credits actually roll.
The inevitable US remake will be interesting. I'd guess that there will be more of the backstory (American audiences seem to demand to know everything about what happened before and have their characters explained to them!), and even more emphasis on the "horror" sequences, not to mention additional CGI. See this version first. It isn't the savior of the genre, but a decent addition to it.
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Long Live the Orson Welles Cinemas
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