Vampires often serve a symbolic role as the proxy for those who are marginalized by society, the ones who don’t or can’t follow the rules and are therefore reviled and misunderstood. While that sounds sympathetic, traditionally the vampire is still the villain destined to be slain. In contemporary storytelling, however, vampires have been taking on the role of the hero, an emotional underdog with the added benefit of immortality and superhuman qualities. In American cinema, the best example is the recent Twilight novel and film. Let the Right One In, a small but heralded film from Sweden, confirms (along with Russia’s Nightwatch and Daywatch) that the literary place for the vampire transcends language and culture. In this case, however, the vampire is a child named Eli, and she and her caretaker move into standard issue European public housing, not the opulent or austere mansion on the edge of town. Eli reluctantly befriends her next door neighbor, the young Oskar, through whose pre-pubescent point of view the story is told. Although it becomes clear that the onset of carnage upon this small Swedish town is Eli’s fault, we see through the eyes of an innocent, and therefore believe Eli to be innocent as well.
Let the Right One In does something extraordinary with the vampire myth, not by merely making us sympathize with the plight of Eli, but by revealing how small the distinctions are between the young vampire and the ramshackle members of this insular community, each of which is alienated or marginalized by socioeconomic status or the inability for social assimilation. Eli advises Oskar, who is bullied at school, that he must not just hit back, but strike as hard as he thinks he is able. True to her literary traditions, Eli is not just Oskar’s id, but ours, a role which plays out in shocking detail near the end of the film. The film’s coda reveals either Oskar’s liberation or his enslavement, a distinction that is meaningless to Oskar. This extraordinary little film seems to suggests that the distinction doesn’t exist for us either.
Here are this morning’s Oscar-nominated films, alphabetically. The nominees for foreign language film and documentary feature are compiled at the end of the list. (Short format nominees are listed in a 
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