Let The Right One In

Unique horror-thriller-teen romance from Sweden about a misfit boy's relationship with the girl next door, who happens to be a vampire immortally frozen in the body of a twelve year old. A lot of the vampire material may be familiar to folks schooled up on their vampire lore or films, but Let The Right One In is never predictable and always tense. Some gory moments are slaveringly delivered, and the onscreen mix of blood, snow and the adolescent snot that seems to be gooey on all the kids' lips in the Swedish winter, is more than a little queasy-making. Both the lead kids give fine performances. Lina Leandersson is perfectly cast as the vampire who has to look young-yet-old for her teen age, and then almost worn on another level as a creature who's been alive for a lot longer than that.

The film deals honestly with bullying, friendships and the fallibility of adults as perceived by teens. A few extraordinary vampire-related events start to jump out in plain view of the townspeople as the film goes on, and I started to wonder why nobody was investigating this stuff (EG - Vampiric fireball in hospital bed.) Fortunately the film is set over sufficiently brief a period of time as to be able to pave over the credibility issues – they can all be dealt with after the credits roll. Speaking of the credits, the penultimate scene of the film is hugely rousing in a positive way, but the ultimate scene is pretty bleak. I had a feeling a lot of the audience I was part of switched off after the highs of the penultimate scene, because anyone who considered the implications of the last scene for a second would have sobered up a little more than was evident.