let the right one in (2008)

Last thing we need is another teen vampire movie, you think, and perhaps rightly so. But obviously Tomas Alfredson's Let The Right One In, made and conceived in wintry Sweden, promises to be something different. Yes, technically speaking there is still blood and gore but the film revels more in subverting the prosaic details of everyday surburban horror, the literal kind. As 12-year-old Oskar (Kara Hedebrant) befriends Eli (Lina Leandersson), the female vampire who has been 12 "for a very long time", the setup is remarkably simple and economical (minimal effects, in other words) while the urban-legend narrative is elegantly paced throughout its 114 minutes to unsettle the viewer from frosty frame to frame. What's great about Let The Right One In is that the filmmakers clearly do not hesitate to fuck around with genre conventions, oftentimes making direct references to the pangs of adolescence (isolation, puberty, bully trauma) and it's interesting that John Ajvide Lindqvist, the writer of the novel and screenplay, made specific references to imagining a vampire's existence to be "miserable, gross and lonely". And rooting this tale of horror in a story that is fundamentally about two misfits slowly drawn towards each other, the uneasy ending of Let The Right One In (no spoilers intended) leaves me with the impression that this film is also Alfredson and Lindqvist's updated ode to to teenage vigilantes.