Let the right person in was the Swedish forerunner of Matt Reeves’ horror success, Let me in. So, let’s pick Let the right one come Because we’re a bunch of pretentious movie snobs? No, that’s because I did it seen this version, but never came to the US successor. Although it’s likely you should check out one or both.
Based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the right person in tells the deeply quiet and gentle story of a friendship between a 12-year-old boy, Oskar, and a girl who looks almost his age, Eli. Eli is new to the area and moves into the apartment building next door to Oskar, and the two begin to develop a relationship, even though Eli initially stated that they could never be friends. Eli, as you may have guessed given the nature of this collection of films, is also a vampire, which complicates things a bit – especially since she needs blood and the adult man she lives with, Håkan, can’t provide her with blood .
What follows is the most surprisingly calm and even piece of cinema, in which the snow plays as much a role as the people. It’s a film that’s about childhood, about bullying, and about friendship before it’s about dismembering vampires, but it does so without pretensions, without thinking outside of the genre, and with plenty of vampiric dismemberment too. Years before the breakthrough of “Scandi-noir” Let the right person in embodied all his characteristic features of understated severity, brooding silence and dark, black humor. — Jehovah’s Witness
