Let the Right One In 2008

A striking original addition to a genre generally considered ripe for parody, the supremely creepy Let the Right One In introduces the melancholic allure of the lonely vampire to a Swedish junior high school in winter 1982. Achingly attuned to the bristling hypersensitivities of its preteen protagonists, the film rhymes the miseries of two soulmates: the ravenous vampire girl who can never die and the 12-year-old boy who can never fit in. By day young Oskar is the victim of relentless bullying. By night he dreams of revenge. He fills a notebook with details of the gruesome blood-lettings that have set neighborhood nerves on edge. Eli, the new girl next door, seems just as much a misfit: she never feels the cold, she smells weird, she can‘t enter a room unless she‘s invited, but she understands Oskar like no one has before. The terrifying world she draws him into is depicted by director Tomas Alfredson with a cool plain style that chills. — BG

"It‘s a remarkably moving and genuinely frightening evocation of childhood terrors, fantasies and frailties, and it immediately takes its place among the classics of the vampire genre. Director Tomas Alfredson and scripter John Ajvide Lindqvist (adapting his popular novel) aren‘t out to subvert or reinvent bloodsucker standards here; the v word is spoken and the conventions are respected, albeit tweaked at times in interesting ways... Even though the undead Eli points out that she‘s ‘12... more or less‘ and Oskar has been made to grow up too fast, it‘s a key to Let the Right One In's success that it never forgets they‘re still kids." — Michael Gingold, Fangoria