My pick for Best Picture of 2008: Let the Right One In

Swedish vampire movie sinks its fangs into the top of my list.

This has not been my favorite year in cinema, in fact its been pretty weak. I'm hoping that the remaining weeks of 2008 bring some surprises, but for now, I can't imagine anything topping Let the Right One In. I caught this amazing Swedish vampire film on Monday night at the Cerrito Theater, and its playing there another week.

I love horror movies in general, and the best ones work on the surface as scare flicks and on a deeper level as some metaphor for real life. Two of my favorite films of the past decade are The Descent and 28 Days Later. The Descent is about a spelunking trip to hell on its subterranean surface, but it also digs at about  a million subliminal fears (claustrophobia, abandonment, infidelity) before it unleashes its some nasty cannibal gollums on the cast. Fantastic stuff. And 28 Days Later (from the director of Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle), uses the zombie genre to tap into the fears of bio-warfare and post 9/11 anxiety. Again, a horror classic.

Back to this year's horror classic. Let the Right One In is a fantastic reinvention of the vampire genre, set in a freezing Swedish suburb. While its certainly about a vampire, it's also about adolescent loneliness, friendship, and bullying. Protagonist Oskar (brilliantly played by uoung Kåre Hedebrant in his first film role) is a lonely Swedish boy who is bullied at school and somewhat neglected by his divorced parents. When a young girl named Eli moves in to the apartment next door (and puts cardboard and duct tape over the windows), Oskar hopes he can be her friend. Turns out Eli has been 11-years-old "for a very long time." A bond is formed between the children, and tension mounts, as we expect Eli to snack on Oskar at any point. It's simply a terrific film, based on a novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist.

Let the Right One in is playing nightly at 9:45 p.m. at the Cerrito Theater in El Cerrito.

 

Posted at 03:48 PM in Pete's Popcorn Picks | Permalink