move of his arm, at the brink of an encounter that could have proven lethal.
Having thus upset the ease with which the trio of bullies pre- viously enjoyed in their daily tor- ture of Oskar, he savors a brief respite, during which the stakes are raised, involving Conny’s older brother joining the ranks of Oskar’s tormentors. This hap- pens outside Oskar’s view, as does the more dire circum- stances that prompts Eli to flee the housing development. Alone and cut off from any hope of res- cue, the bullies close in on Oskar at his most vulnerable.
What anchors the whole of the film is how vividly Lindqvist
(adapting his own novel to the screen) and direc- tor Tomas Alfredson sustain how genuine the threat is to Oskar. When Oskar at last lashes out at his primary tormentor, the boys are scheming to force Oskar onto thin ice and possible death by either hyperthermia or drowning; once the primary bully’s brother assumes the Alpha Wolf position in the pack, it’s clear he intends to either drown or disfigure Oskar in retaliation for Oskar having dealt a decisive blow against his tormentor. These kids aren’t kidding around, and neither are Lindqvist and Alfredson. They neither am- plify the bullying into the extravagant overstate- ment of, say, NEVER BACK DOWN (which co-starred as its sadistic bully TWILIGHT’s nomi- nal villain Cam Gigandet), nor do they play down its potential consequences.
That’s a tall order in a film that, quite early on, presents the unexpected killing and bleeding of a teenager onscreen with disorienting, dispassion- ate complacency, and stages the feeding frenzies of Eli with cumulative precision of impact. Given the horror film context of Oskar’s story, it would have been easy to comparatively minimize the grim reality of Oskar’s own life-and-death situation. It’s amazing that LET THE RIGHT ONE IN walks that cinematic and narrative tightwire with such deli- cate grace, clarity and zen-like focus, aided every step of the way by the performances of all involved, primary among them the affectless Käre Hedebrant and mesmerizing Lina Leandersson. Without coming right out and saying so, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is set in Sweden (the Stockholm suburb of Blackeberg) in 1984, and rigorously maintains its sense of the era and its
setting. As my fellow Vermonter Carl Etnier notes, “The book’s author was born in Blackeberg in 1968; his world as a 12-year-old would have looked very similar to Oskar’s.” For its time and place, TWILIGHT does a simi- larly solid job of evoking its milieu with its own brand of electricity and narrative economy. In TWILIGHT, we’re plunged into the piranha pit of contemporary American high school life, and it’s the film’s ability to palpably evoke, nurture and sustain this utterly familiar and absolutely discom- forting buzz that lends the whole such bracing immediacy. TWILIGHT does so without condescen- sion, lending a life-and-death gravitas to the film well before the first overt threat to heroine Bella (Kristen Stewart) when that vehicle spins toward her in the school parking lot. As in LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, it is TWILIGHT’s protagonist whose sensibility shapes the film. Un- like its Swedish contemporary, here the vampires are the locals and Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) is the transplanted outsider. Actually, everything is relative (pun intended): the vampires have been living in town at least a century or two longer than Bella, maintaining an uneasy truce with a tribe of Native American lycanthropic shapeshifters who are the true locals—but they, too, are outsiders to the local white population. Bella’s initial attraction to Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson of HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, 2007) combusts after his uncanny rescue of her when an SUV spins out of control in the school parking lot, a protective role that becomes more critical once a renegade trio of nomadic blood- suckers target Bella, led by the singularly
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Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) meets vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), producing instant sparks in TWILIGHT.
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