Let The Right One In Part II Movie

4 out of 5 Stars

Pros                          

-          Excellent acting and directing

-          Written by the author

-          Visually pleasing

Cons

-          Some areas are rushed through or glossed over

Oskar a 12 year-old bullied boy finds comfort in the arms of Eli a child vampire.

Time for part two the original Swedish version of the film by Tomas Alfredson, starting Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson playing the star roles of Oskar and Eli the boy and vampire who are centric to the plot.  It is based on the book of the same name by John Ajvde Lindqvist (Who also wrote the script).

The movie itself covers the whole of the book in the span of two hours and does it so well that it is near perfection and has garnered many awards including the Tribeca Film Festival’s “Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature” in 2008 and has quiet the cult following.  It has been reworked into an American film by the title of Let Me in starring Chloë Mortez and Kodi Smit-Mcphee in the starring roles.

But that is not what I’m here to talk about, as of writing this I haven’t even seen the American version and am going to wait til it hits DVD to get it.  I am here to talk about the original film which is surprisingly well executed and holds a special place in my heart.  As I’ve said before it does a marvelous job of condensing the book down to two hours, as a matter of fact it does away with the one major complaint I had about the novel: it gets rid of the side characters.  The film focuses much of its  attention on the relationship between Oskar and Eli tossing aside several of the incidental scenes and characters that plagued the book. Although there were two or three characters that I wish they had kept that were glossed over, and some of the scenes they cut between the grownups were very much needed to understand the context; alas we will get into that in a later post!

The film is set in the Blackberg suburb of Sweden and does well in catching the feeling of the book. Its color pallet of grey, white, and a subtle night blue help you to feel the impression of depression and oppression which seem to gather amongst the characters as the film goes on. 

The supporting cast, from the bullies to the child vampires caretaker are well cast in their roles and really encapsulate the characters. It goes without saying but the stars of the film Lina especially do a marvelous job of capturing a role that could be hard to do and make it actually very easy to relate to, and almost human.  The only real qualm I have with it is the dubbing, some of the voice overs are great match the actor or actress and some of the voice overs clang in my ears, for that reason I suggest you get the subtitled version of the movie. And please make sure the subtitles say the theatrical version.  It seems when the DVD company put it in a narrative variation instead of the theatrical version, taking away some of the impact of the scenes; they have since corrected the mistake adding a theatrical track to the subtitle options.  But the company will not give refunds to those who get the botched subtitles.

I recommend it though I do wish they had kept some of Håkan’s story intact, but understand because of the sensitive nature of that part of the story he has such a reduced role in the overall plot.  That being said if you are squeamish of blood, don’t like slow moving movies I would suggest maybe just checking out the book.  But to me the book and film are very well worth it and very much perfection when it comes to adaptations of book to film.

A note on the third and fourth parts; they will more than likely be in January as the DVD comes out three days after the Christmas holiday, and I am not doing a comparison without seeing this last part of the franchise.