Let the Right One In

Starring Kâre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson. In Swedish with English subtitles. Rating unavailable. Opens Friday, October 31, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

Blond and pale to the point of transparency, a lonely 12-year-old boy called Oskar (Kâre Hedebrant) is befriended by the strange girl next door, bringing some much-needed fresh blood into his bleak existence.

Directed by Tomas Alfredson, this wintry Swedish gem is a wholly original take on the vampire saga—a masterful blend of macabre storytelling, coming-of-age frankness, some shocking gore, and eerie melding of quiet sounds and incomplete imagery, as well as some subtle gender-line exploration.

The vague-sounding title—chosen by screenwriter John Ajvide Lindqvist, adapting from his own novel—refers to both a toothsome Morrissey song and an old folk tale that insists a vampire will never cross a threshold when not invited.

Most of the early meetings between Oskar and the darker, slightly older, and sexually ambiguous Eli (Lina Leandersson) take place in the chilly courtyard of their suburban Stockholm apartment building. She is a newcomer there, along with a man (Per Ragnar) whom nosy neighbours assume is her father, although they're puzzled when he covers his windows and is seen wandering the rough areas of the city with an ominous-looking toolbag.

Soon, people start disappearing in this working-class neighbourhood, with a few bodies turning up drained of life fluids. One woman is attacked in the same courtyard; she survives but starts exhibiting increasingly weird behaviour involving cats and fire. But Oskar is more concerned with bullying at school, as well as the acrimony between his divorced parents, and Eli proves a weird kind of sanctuary from all that.

The film's ending, a coda after its logical finish, reads like a tacked-on revenge fantasy. The rest, however, is so stylishly assured, it's scary!

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