Let the Right One In

Twelve-year-old Oskar lives in a gray concrete housing estate outside Stockholm. The skinny boy is constantly bullied by his classmates. Fighting back is out of the question, even though his frustration is mounting. Then, after sunset, he meets Eli, a girl his own age who has just moved into the neighborhood, at the playground. Slowly, he befriends the strange girl. Eventually, Oskar discovers that she is a vampire. She teaches him to defend himself and fight back. Soon, fear and terror reign in the neighborhood.... A captivating story about love, revenge, and horror. With its chillingly fascinating images, the film reinvents the vampire genre in a romantic, but by no means squeamish way. The visually stunning, highly sensitive, and award-winning horror musical for a new generation. “As dark as the night may seem, it lays the foundation for an unusual friendship between two outsiders, a boy and a vampire girl. A masterpiece by Tomas Alfredson.” (Movipilot) "Alfredson skillfully plays with moods and revels for a long time in the foreboding of the evil things to come. The barren suburban landscapes are frozen into frosty and colorless still images in the February cold. Only when warm blood spatters from open throats onto frozen snow does warmth, life, and speed come into the film. When things get down to business in the second half of this nasty milieu study, Alfredson usually lets the bloody atrocities take place off-screen. The final massacre is particularly striking, with only the prelude and the result visible on screen. How effective and cruel it can be not to see violent details should be seen for oneself in the cinema." (Jörg Buttgereit, in: epd FILM)