Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 25: Let the Right One In (2008)

  This was the pick for Movie Club but I wasn't going to re-watch it because I thought I had already posted about it.  Turns out, I had only written about the American remake.  An oversight I have corrected.  Content warning:  blood, some gore, bullying, burned bodies

Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is trying to work up the nerve to stand up to the bullies at his school, when he meets Eli (Lina Leandersson), a strange new tenant who looks about his age.  Eli needs fresh blood to survive and her adult (Per Ragnar) is supposed to provide that by harvesting from healthy specimens.  Unfortunately, he is terrible at it and gets caught, leaving Eli in a pickle.  Can her and Oskar's new friendship survive the demands of her diet?

This is one of the best vampire movies made in the last thirty years.  It is honestly riveting and a fresh take on behavior and abilities.  Eli is much more of a cryptid than vampires derived from Western Europe (the Stoker kind).  She is an apex predator in that she is deadly but also very sensitive to her surroundings.  She uses terrain and ambush instead of enthralling her victims, and seems very aware of how removed she is from humanity.

I cannot overstate how gorgeous this is.  It is cold in a way that is hard to describe, but you will feel it down to the bone.  It is currently streaming on Kanopy, Amazon Prime, Tubi, Peacock, and PlutoTV.  Don't miss out.