Sunday 21st March 2010

Let the Right One In

Director: Tomas Alfredson
Year: 2008
Stars: Kare Hedebrandt, Lina Leandersson

My third cinema visit this week! Having read a lot of very positive reviews for this movie, I really wanted to see it. I thought I had missed my chance as it was released a while ago, but then I discovered that the Watershed were showing it as part of a "Scandinavian Chillers" season - this Sunday only. The perfect opportunity to eat a fry up and then go to a cinema on a Sunday lunch time!

The film follows Oskar (Hedebrandt) as he meets a girl, Eli (Leandersson), who has just moved into the apartment beside him. They slowly become friends, but Eli is clearly not all she seems.

The film manages to mix horror, tenderness and child confusion really successfully - never truly a horror movie, but horrific things do happen. But there are also moments to laugh at, sometimes even when the worst imaginable things are happening. This is because you really do start to relate to, and maybe even care about, the characters here.

When I first left the cinema I wasn't sure what to make of this film - perhaps because I felt like I'd never really seen anything close enough to it before to be able to judge. But that's the beauty of the film - it really does look at things in a different way. The more I think about it, the more I like it. I feel it may well be a film that stays with me for a long time.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5