When I recently described the plot of the Scandinavian film, Let the Right One In to a friend, her response was, “It sounds just like Twilight.” Suppressing a shudder, I replied that it was nothing like the juvenile, canned ham that constituted last week’s screen adaptation of the popular novel about teenaged bloodsuckers. Let the Right One In is exquisite and erudite whereas Twilight is clumsy and dim-witted; Let the Right One In is genre transcending whereas Twilight is common and formulaic; Let the Right One In is one of the year’s finest films whereas Twilight is nothing but mass-produced schlock.

Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is a strange, friendless, 12-year-old boy with albino-pale skin who is regularly picked on by schoolyard sadists. While he creates vivid (and violent) revenge fantasies about getting even, he stands up for himself only in his make-believe world. Oskar finds an ally in Eli (Lina Leandersson), a girl next door who encourages him to stand up for himself. They rendezvous nightly in the frigid courtyard of their apartment complex, he bundled against the cold and snow and she, raven haired, clad only in the lightest of garments. The equally strange Eli becomes Oskar’s friend, and in time, with all the halting stutter-steps of pre-pubescence, Oskar comes to look upon her as his first love.

But Eli is no ordinary girl. She is not, in the strictest sense, even human. Eli cannot abide sunlight, is capable of impossible physical feats and has a biological imperative to drink blood. Young Eli, you see, is a vampire. As the bodies begin to pile up and Oskar comes to see his friend for what she really is, he finds he cannot abandon his newfound confidant and protector, and will not give up the one person in the world who will not give up on him.

Based on the novel by John Ajvide Linqvist (who also wrote the script), the Nordic import Let the Right One In is the best kind of horror film, one that reinvigorates a tired genre with a bright bolt of originality, not redefining it so much as transcending it. While not a horror film in the traditional sense, it slavishly follows the long-established and time-honored tenets of vampirism, granting scares where they are necessary (is there anything more terrifying than a killer who is also a child?) but never making the mistake of believing that the film’s purpose is to scare us. Instead, Let the Right One In is fed to us like a good mystery novel; we’re not told what’s going on, but must figure it out for ourselves with a single piece of information at a time.

You would be forgiven for not believing that a movie about vampires can blend authentic chills with genuine feeling, unadulterated ugliness with breathtaking beauty. Let the Right One In, at its most basic distillation, is nothing more complicated than a coming of age love story. The film possesses surprising depth. Although all around them may be bloodshed and brutality, Oskar and Eli’s budding relationship is tentative and sweet, a thing of delicacy, fragility and heartbreaking beauty. Both children are misfits. Both are unhappy. Both are achingly lonely. But rather than package their psychological angst as a propellant for his vampire story, director Tomas Alfredson instead uses the consummately performed vampire story to drive his narrative of connection and relationships.

Alfredson and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema have made an elegant, restrained film of remarkable stillness and gentle pacing. Their camera wastes no unnecessary energy yawing this way and that. Half the time it glides through scenes, floating spectrally. Other times it remains rooted in place, as if frozen by the wintry environment. The cinematography is pristine and starkly beautiful, bathed in Bergman’s winter light and enveloping snowfall. But don’t think that just because Alfredson and Hoytema know how to meticulously frame their austere compositions that they don’t also know how to stage bursts of horrific violence and splatter gore when it’s called for. Eli is a monster and can make a monstrous mess.

Terrifying yet touching, moving yet unsentimental, Let the Right One In is so fresh and original that it utterly exposes how stale and formulaic what passes for horror in most cineplexes has truly become. Let the Right One In can safely be called a classic, even before its name is pulled from the theater marquee.

NOTE: It was recently announced that Let the Right One In will be remade for American audiences by Matt Reeves, the director of Cloverfield. God help us.

© Copyright 2008 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.