Let This One In

Oskar and Eli and Rubik

Let the Right One In (2008) is a nifty little Swedish vampire flick about disaffected Yoot. And unlike the American examples of the teen angst/vampire genre, this film is also a taut, creepy thriller, and nobody forms a band.

Oskar is a goofy, slightly effeminate kid who is bullied at school. He acts out his revenge fantasies by stabbing a tree and doing a "Deliverance" riff.

Which is how he meets Eli, the little vampire girl, who is also a whiz at the Rubik's cube.

Eli's protector is an extremely inept provider of blood, so she has to go on the prowl her ownself, and the mooks in the Stockholm suburb, though chumps, are, ultimately, missed.

So eventually the truth comes out.

"Let the sunshine in"

We're talking savage little 12-year old vampire girl. Dressing a victim much as you'd dress a deer. Exploding vampire victim. Unfortunate and mercifully brief look at little girl nekkid. Arm rolls. Corpse on ice. Comical gym teacher. Stupid drunk Swedes. Subtitles don't match the dubbing, but the discrepancies are not amusing, merely annoying. Good moody sequence shots. Good tension building. Not especially gory, but ghoulish all the same. Three coils — check it out.