Film Review: Let the Right One In

I had thought it was only last year when I read the wonderful book 'Let The Right One In' -- turns out that I'm going loopy, since it was actually nearly two years ago now.

Blimey. Time flies (so do buses apparently).

Anyway, after hearing there was to be a movie of this (I'm la-la-la-ing the inevitable US remake as a 'not-going-there' thing), I started prowling around for a release date. It was frustratingly long in coming and I kept hearing tantilising reports that the Swedish film was to be a breathtaking adaptation by the book's author.

By this spring I was getting angsty for the film to arrive - and then, BANG. The film promotion was EVERYWHERE. Could it live up to expectations?

Hell, yes.

What really pleased me was just quite how much of the sentiment and feel of the novel the film retains. Sure, there are changes, some that I missed more than others (Eli's ambiguous identity) but the film brings some magnificent sequences to life.

It's not all horror - there is a delicacy to the portrayals that I really liked - but when the horror comes it does make you suitably wince.

I went home and immediately re-read the book. It hadn't lost any of its power though I was especially pleased with how the final Swimming Pool sequence was adapted to the screen.

A brilliant book and a brilliant film. As I said before, recommended. Thanks again for the complimentary copy.

Brilliant Book: John Ajvide Lindqvist - Let the Right One In

Last weekend the lovely lovely Baby Washington sent me a fabulous book to read.

John Ajvide Lindqvist: Let the Right One In (forthcoming English translation 2007)

Translated from Swedish by Ebba Segerberg


Okay, here's the thing. The book came Saturday 5 May at about 7.30am.

I read it straight through.

Seriously, this is the very definition of a page-turner. I absolutely could not stop reading it.

By mid-afternoon I had finished it. Every thrilling page of it.

So what can you expect if you get hold of this book?

Well, it's essentially a vampire tale. But it is so much more than that. It's magical in its ability to convey the mysteries and weirdness of its narrative. It's also a beautifully realised tale of growing up: the conflict of emotions that can be stirred by (almost) adolescence. Though I haven't ever been to Sweden, there is a real sense of place to the novel in its depiction of the bleak, blank, psyche-dulling environs of Sweden's suburb flats and underpasses. The central characters - Oskar and Eli - are the kind of people who you quickly become interested in and for whom you wish the best, despite the horrors of the story and the havoc Eli stirs.

There are scenes of real violence and horror (that whole thing from Buffy about vampire's easily being vamooshed into dust? It ain't happening here. The scenes with Virginia in the hospital are vivid and wincing. Sickness - emotional and physical - is both brutal and painful. And as proof that Linqvist isn't only capable of writing young people - the petty bullying violence and desire for affection, vengeance, survival - turn to the scenes of alcohol fuelled despair amongst Lacke and Virginia's crowd. Brilliant). Blood drips, emotions are heightened: but there is no sense of this being pleasurably pornographic or romantic - even though certain scenes are sexually charged or achingly full of passionate sentiment. From the Prologue's pre-emptively chilling report of a removals man realising his role in the horrors to follow -

"He grimaced as if he has developed a revulsion for his own handwriting.

18 October: Norrkoping-Blackeberg (Stockholm).
He was the one who had moved them in."

- to the Epilogue's recounting of bloodied, headless boys and a child alone with a large trunk containing... this novel draws you in and holds you fast. The pages in between will present you with a narrative of the mortification of leaving childhood; bullying; love; the mutability of perceptions; disappointment in parents and adult role models; the realities of alcoholism; and myths of youth/age and vampirism. It will make you laugh at absurdities, stir fascinated revulsion, and cause you to cheer for the most unlikely of unheroic figures and actions. If you want there to be something more to your vampire novel than straight neck-biting and dark heroism, this will work for you; and if you don't like vampire tales but are drawn to bleak tales of alienation and human experiences then this will be for you too.

I can scarcely recommend this highly enough. Read it when you can.