"Let the Right One In": What happens when vampires fall in love

What if vampires were real? What if a movie treated them not as metaphors or supernatural fantasies or as an opportunity to camp it up? What if a filmmaker presented these specimens of the undead as rather ordinary creatures who just happen to live on the blood of humans?

The result might look something like "Let the Right One In," a spooky Swedish thriller that manages to break the rules of the genre while holding on to many of the rituals that remain dear to the hearts of vampire fans.

The somber, clinical tone of the movie may be closer to Ingmar Bergman and Krzysztof Kieslowski than it is to Bram Stoker, but the story line is boilerplate stuff: When a lethally active vampire and its mysterious protector arrive in an early 1980s suburban community, they start piling up blood-drained corpses and eventually face opposition.

The chief twist here is that the vampire is an adolescent girl named Eli (Lina Leandersson), who has been 12 years old, as she puts it, "for a very long time." Almost immediately she's smitten with Oskar (Kare Hedebrant), a geeky blond kid who gets picked on by school bullies.

While Eli shows Oskar how to stand up for himself, her ties to her serial-killer companion are loosened, and "Let the Right One In" becomes a perverse variation on a coming-of-age romance. It's at its most twisted when Oskar cuts himself and Eli responds with a frightening display of blood lust.

This, however, turns out to be a rare example of her restraint. When she attacks an older woman, who quickly becomes a member of the undead, a colony of cats rips into the victim's flesh and makes mincemeat of her. And that's far from all; Eli is just saving up her energy for a shocker finale.

The director, Tomas Alfredson, is fond of snowy imagery that emphasizes the loneliness and wintry isolation of the characters. He begins the movie with shots of snow drifting past the camera, and he seems to end it that way, but it's a false alarm. There's one last kicker that's worth the wait.

The eerie screenplay is the work of John Ajvide Lindqvist, based on Lindqvist's novel. Perhaps the role of Oskar was more interesting on the page; glum and mostly unengaged, Hedebrant is the one weak spot in the film. It's Leandersson's controlled ferocity that keeps their scenes together moving forward.

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com