Let the Right One In

A recent subway read which I finished probably a week ago is the vampire novel Let the Right One In, by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist. The Daily Express exclaimed that “Lindqvist has reinvented the vampire novel.” It is a good novel, I agree. About a young boy named Oskar, always bullied at school, who then befriends his new neighbor, Eli, who turns out to be a vampire. A simple enough story, the the main plot is diluted with more and more sub plots. One finishes the book feeling that some of these sub plots were there, not to add to the suspense, not even to reinforce the reoccurring themes like absent fathers and alcohol/blood addiction, but to just thicken the book.

I’ve wrote about the film adaptation of Let the Right One In on this blog before. It was an excellent movie. In fact, it is one of the best vampire films I’ve seen in a very long time and would probably place it on my list of top three vampire movies. The other two would include Interview with a Vampire and Bramstoker’s Dracula.

It is very seldom that I would say that a film adaptation of a novel is better than the original novel. I’ve only said it of one other movie of which I’ve also read the novel. But in this case it is so. I watched the film again, after reading the novel, and understood why it is better. The film is stripped of the excess. The plot is streamlined, the action improved. And by doing so I felt that the focus on the relationship of the two main characters, Oskar and Eli, came much better to the front. It is their story. The story of two unlikely “children” becoming friends.

In this case, skip the novel and watch the film.