EFTI [2008] 115′
country: Sweden
director: THOMAS ALFREDSON
cast: KARE HEDEBRANT, LINA LEANDERSON,
cast: PER RAGNAR, HENRICK DAL
Magnolia Home Entertainment [2009] $34.98
region free | single layer BD25 | supplements in SD
Order this disc from AMAZON.COM
The vampire sub-genre has been in a downward spiral ever since the heyday of British horror house Hammer – Anne Rice [and subsequent filmed adaptations of her material] kept the Gothic aesthetic popularized by those original Hammer pieces but birthed the emotive and mopish blood suckers most of us have since learned to hate. Francis Ford Coppola’s imperfect but none the less intriguing DRACULA was the last film of the type to interest viewers for reasons other than its picture-perfect cast, and the days of Werner Herzog’s visionary take on Murnau’s NOSFERATU seemed long since passed by the time teen hit TWILIGHT struck box office gold while driving another rusty nail into a sub-genre already six feet under.
That’s what I thought, at least, until a good friend pointed me towards a trailer for the film covered here today. Being about as in-touch with the modern horror scene as a sea otter I’d not heard of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN prior to that, and the trailer had my interest thoroughly piqued by the time its minute and forty two seconds were up. I was a bit irritated to discover that I’d long missed any opportunity for theatrical screenings locally – but irritation quickly turned to anticipation once I realized LTROI was due for release on home video just a few short weeks later. I put the release at the top of my Netflix cue and waited – that I’ve since felt the need to pick it up for my own home video collection should give some idea of my initial reaction.
LTROI is a simple and deliberately paced story that follows young Oskar, a 12 year old who has become the primary target for a small band of bullies at his school. Living with his oblivious divorced mother, who believes his shallow lies about the scratches and bruises he comes home with, and surrounded by a tenement full of residents seemingly content to drink their lives away, Oskar is definitely in need of an exit. His life takes a welcome turn when he meets Eli, a withdrawn girl seemingly his own age who has moved in next door with the mysterious Hakan. The two bond over a Rubick’s Cube and, from that moment onward, are virtually inseparable – except for during the sparse daylight. As murders begin piling up in the area and Eli presents with ever-stranger behaviours – being unable to eat everyday foods and popping in at night through Oskar’s window – suspicions start to mount. By the time Oskar musters the courage to ask Eli if she is a vampire late in the film the audience is already very much in the know – the more interesting question is what that fact means for their budding relationship.
And that is, thankfully, a question LTROI is more than happy to explore.
There are few moments of traditional horror to be found in LTROI, one of the precious few Swedish films this reviewer recalls getting a wide release [the work of Bergman aside] – the real horror of the story is to be found in the dismal life of its protagonist, Oskar. The bullies constantly molesting him in the school hallways are the monsters of the story, and they can hardly know that their target is developing disturbing violent tendencies beneath his pale and quivering veneer. It doesn’t seem especially odd when Oskar knows how the police cracked a recent homicide case when a policeman visiting his class asks about it, but his answer takes on a decidedly more disturbing context when we see his secret dossier – loaded with newspaper stories about recent murders and, perhaps more telling, advertisements for hunting knives. Oskar is on a one-way train into serial killer territory with tickets bought and paid for by classmates cruel for the sake of being so.
With Oskar as the starting point, one can easily choose to take Eli both at face value or as an extension of the boy’s own desire to commit violence against the world around him. It comes as no surprise that Eli first discovers Oskar while he’s living out a revenge fantasy the tenement courtyard, and it is she who provides the motivation necessary to convince him to make a stand against those who antagonize him. Still, there are telling differences between the two. When Eli is forced to hunt for herself for the first time she shows remorse at having to do so. By contrast, Oskar is delighted at the sight of a child his own age screaming in pain at his feet – he’s tasted blood and, what’s more, he liked it.
That the relationship between Oskar and Eli is so touching and effective is a testament to the quality of both John Lindqvist’s story [he wrote both the best-selling source novel and the fine screenplay] and the talent both in front of and behind the camera. Sex has been a central component in the vampire mythos since Bram Stoker first popularized it in 1897, and LTROI’s subtle transposing of that into a tale of pre-teen puppy love and burgeoning sexuality is simply brilliant. There are moments in the film every bit as sweet as are to be found in MY GIRL and its ilk, but deeper and darker things seem to be forever bubbling just below the surface. Even if Oskar and Eli are in a relationship defined by parasitism and death, it’s one of cinema’s great romantic moments when we discover that Eli needs Oskar every bit as much as Oskar needed her throughout the rest of the picture.
LTROI is easily one of the best films to see release last year and ranks as one of the most original horror films of the past decade. It’s crafting is impeccable, with Alfredson and company’s mise en scene recalling such classic auteurs as Mario Bava and Val Lewton while being every bit as modern as contemporary Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s [the uncanny use of space reminds me particularly of that director]. Their approach to the more graphic moments is one of welcome restraint in this new dawn of the gore film, with violence often viewed at a distance and the infrequent blood looking thick and uncannily real. The sound design evokes a world every bit as bleak and cold as is to be seen in the images, and the score by Johan Soderqvist is happily devoid of uber-bass shock cues or violin strings stretched to breaking point. The entire affair is, in a word, refreshing.
Magnolia Home Entertainment’s DVD of LET THE RIGHT ON IN was something of a let down when I screened it roughly a week ago – the transfer was reasonable and in the proper aspect ratio but interlaced and lacking a bit in color reproduction. The Blu-ray is superior to it in every regard as far as the feature presentation is concerned and was, at least in the case of this reviewer, something of a revelation [note: I've yet to configure my Linux-running PC for Blu-ray captures - the compressed .jpg images used in this review have been taken from the official DVD release of the film and are not representative of the Blu-ray's image].
LTROI is presented in a fine VC-1 encoded 1080p transfer in the original intended aspect ratio of approximately 2.35:1 – the bit rate is healthy, with the film taking up as much room on the disc as Kubrick’s considerably longer 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY did on that release. Detail and contrast are both expectantly strong and best the standard definition offering handily, but color reproduction is where I noted the most marked improvement. LTROI is a film that exudes a palpable cold, with plenty of snowy vistas and subdued icy hues to go around – the only color that really pops is red, for reasons that should be obvious. Magnolia’s high definition transfer renders this all-important color scheme and Hoyte Van Hoytema’s expert cinematography beautifully. Audio is presented via two fine DTS-HD tracks – one in the original Swedish and the other, forced if no other option is selected when the disc loads, an English dubbing. They seem to match in terms of fidelity [no real surprise there] but the Swedish track is certainly preferable to me, with the dialogue in the dub track sounding artificial and out-of-place.
Augmenting the two audio tracks are four sets of subtitles. There is a standard English* track as well and English SDH track, with another standard track in Spanish. Should the English dub be your chosen audio option, there are optional English Narrative subtitles that translate incidental items [newspaper headlines, signs, etc.] not covered in the dialogue. All four tracks are rendered in the same highly readable rounded white sans serif font and are accompanied by a thin black border that keeps them visible during even the brightest moments.
Supplements are limited but welcome. There is a very brief but informative Behind The Scenes featurette [7 minutes] covering a few aspects of the production, including information on the setting of the picture both in place and time [something not made readily apparent in the film itself]. Next are four brief deleted scenes, the first of which is very much recommended. Two image galleries, one for still photos and the other for the various theatrical posters, round out the extras. Happily missing are a scad of trailers for unrelated films and HD television that accompany the standard definition release. As Magnolia’s release of THE HOST from 2007 has led me to expect, the menus and operations for this release are expertly designed in a low-key style that’s in keeping with that of the film. Being relatively new to the format, I was pleasantly surprised to find my progress tracked by the disc itself as I scanned either backwards or forwards through the feature – for someone who’s laserdisc player still sees frequent play it was a nice touch.
I’d love to have seen a more lavish dual layered release, a la THE HOST, but the quality of the film alone is more than enough to make this disc a ‘must buy’. It’s reassuring to see Magnolia Home Entertainment continuing to represent high quality genre efforts on home video in the United States – I can only hope that a Blu-ray upgrade to their mediocre 2006 SD release of Kurosawa’s KAIRO [PULSE] will someday materialize. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN comes highly recommended, and this Magnolia Home Entertainment Blu-ray is definitely the way to go for those looking to add it to their home video collection.
* There has been no small amount of controversy regarding the original subtitles included with this disc, which badly translate a few sections of the film and seem to miss much of the dark comedy entirely. From what I understand, more recent pressings of both the Blu-Ray and DVD releases of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN contain the much more accurate English translation that played with the film theatrically.
