Let the Right One In Review

Written by: MistressOf Horror   

Sweden's "Let the Right One In" directed by Tomas Alfredson , soon to be an American remake. But if there ever was a foreign horror film that should not be remade, it is this one -as much a heartfelt drama as it is a horror movie. A very unique film .. This is a movie that even your non-horror fans will  love as simply a great movie. And horror fans who like intelligent films will be  blown away by one of the most imaginative vampire movies ever made. This movie will haunt you in a very poetic sense.

It opens by introducing us to Oskar (Kare Hedebrant), a lonely 12-year-old living in a snow-bound Swedish apartment complex with his divorced mother. Bullied and beat up at school, he withdraws at home, spending time alone in the snow-covered playground outside his apartment. A new neighbor has moved in to the apartment next door -- a neighbor, we soon learn, who's a killer. The older man strings up victims,  hanging them upside down to drain their blood.

Oskar soon meets the killer's companion, a 12-year-old girl named Eli (Lina Lendersson), who seems to not notice the cold outside the apartment. Meeting him for the first time without a jacket on, she explains to him that she can't be his friend. But as she continues to meet with him night after night in the icy playground, and borrows his Rubik's Cube (solving it in seconds), a bond slowly develops between the two child outcasts. They naturally go "steady," and the strange girl gives Oskar the courage he needs to brutally fight back against the bullies at school.

We realize something that it takes a lot longer for Oskar to realize: The girl is a vampire. She has an ability to climb walls and visit her new boyfriend from his apartment window, several floors above the ground. But she needs to be given verbal permission to enter his home before going inside. (We learn for the first time in this film what happens when a vampire actually enters a home she hasn't been invited into.)  Soon there is complications due to her companion being caught. Oskar quickly  realizes that she now needs his help.

Her Renfield-like human slave (Per Ragnar) murders for her and pays the rent for her. But she does her own killing as well, dropping on her victims like a monkey out of the sky, not terribly concerned if there are witnesses of her killings. There is one scene that involves a cat that is very amusing

. "Let the Right One In" is a perfect movie and I have always felt it was Oscar quality for foreign language film. It's that good.