A version of this review previously appeared during Fantastic Fest. There is a new addendum at the bottom of the post. Let the Right One In opens in select cities today, as the first release in Magnet’s Six Shooter Series.
After months and months of anticipation, encompassing countless breathless reviews, surprise festival accolades, and angry warnings from supporters of the Swedish vampire film that I’d better stop dismissing it as “The Swedish Vampire Film”, there was probably no way in frozen-over Scandinavian hell that Let the Right One In could have lived up to the hype. So — sorry — but I don’t think it’s a masterpiece, nor do I see it breaking significant new ground. In transmuting universal real-world fears of the other and of mortality into the tropes of the supernatural, it’s simply doing what good horror movies have always done, and always should do. That said, it’s hard not to find its widespread popularity to be extremely encouraging. Aside from its lovely cinematography and sensitive child-actor performances, Right One’s real selling point is the humanist gild it lays on its genre lily. Maybe this is why I’m less than blown away — it’s hardly the first film I’ve seen recently which uses basic genre elements to delve deeper into everyday human horrors — but if there seems to be more of an appetite for this kind of horror than the Saw V kind of horror, that has to be a good thing.
