Dem Reviews: Let The Right One In

Seriously, if Lina Leandersson doesn’t get some kind of award thrown her way for her role as Eli in Let the Right One In then this whole world has gone batshit insane and I just don’t know if I can deal with you bastards anymore. Portraying a who-knows-how-old vampire in the body of a twelve year old girl, it’s very, very easy to forget that this is a film. There is something in those huge green eyes that looks ancient, and has seen far too much, and is so sad, so lonely. Sometimes you’re looking at this girl, and you think there’s no way she could possibly be that age.  Not because of her physical appearance, but because of how she carries herself.

I’m a big fan of movies, but I usually take the movie as a whole. It’s one big experience. I don’t notice individual performances. I’m oblivious to special effects seams and glitches. They just pass me by, I get lost in what’s happening. It’s my blessing and my curse. People talk about so-and-so’s performance, and I can’t really comment. I can talk about how the movie made me feel, how a character made me react, but I can’t comment on any individual’s actual performance per se.

This is no longer the case. Like the amazing audio in Cloverfield, my obliviousness was taken apart, piece by piece by this masterwork. I almost feel bad for this girl, because how is she going to top this?  It may have struck you by now, astute reader, that I sort of have a soft spot for this chick, but I can’t help but cringe at the ease with which it will be a string of ‘yeah, but it was no Eli’ in regards to her future ventures onto celluliod.

Oh yeah, the movie was okay too.

I kid, I kid. Do yourself a real favor, treat yourself right, and see this movie if at all possible. The story is a wonderful departure from what you may expect if you have heard anything about the movie. If you’re lucky enough to know little/nothing about it, so much the better. The thicker your blinders going in, the more joyous each little thing will seem. Watch out for tiny moments too, that speak so many volumes about these characters without a single word of that wonderfully jagged Swedish tongue. The lead male, Oskar, stealing a smell at the sleeve of his fathers sweater, for example, was worthy of a hundred cliches about ‘pictures > words’.

Thinking back on it now, if the movie didn’t have a single word of dialogue, not one, I would have followed the plot perfectly. It would have made complete and utter sense. This review could go on for paragraphs, but I don’t need to do that, and you don’t want to read it. Suffice it to say, do what you need to do to see this movie. Support some high-caliber foreign film action, and don’t forget to let the right one in (protip: the right one is not your coke-snorting neighbor who wants to borrow a kidney).