Let the Right One In

This slow and creepy vampire movie stars Kåre Hedebrant as Oskar, a 12-year-old boy in early-’80s Sweden who is the victim of bullies. One night, while playing alone in the snow-covered lot outside of his apartment, he meets Eli (Lina Leandersson), a little girl who has a dark secret. Without saying precisely what that secret is, I will note that she survives by drinking the blood of the living. So, she’s either a vampire or a Bush appointee. She and Oskar find the strange kind of love that can only happen between pubescent boys and undead girls. Then, things get weird and violent and very, very pretty. Let the Right One In has the slow pacing of European cinema, which helps to create a persistent mood of discomfort and foreboding. But if you’d rather see a fast-paced version with more explosions and wise-cracking, you can wait until 2010, when Cloverfield director Matt Reeves is slated to release his American-made remake. Then again, in spite of our massive military and personal corpulence, there are still a few things that Swedes do better than Americans. One of those things involves lots of nudity and cocoa butter. Another one is making intelligent, engaging cinema.