Let The Right One In: Doo!

Let The Right One In
Originally uploaded by umbraco

By now, you may have caught on to our love-hate fascination with vampire fiction-cum-film. The celluloid iterations of True Blood and Twilight made us dry heave; Interview with the Vampire and Bram Stoker's Dracula are fairly decent; Nosferatu is a cool DVD to have on your shelf (just don't watch it if you have ADD).

But this one is in a league of its own. Let the Right One In, originally titled Låt den rätte komma in* in its native Sweden, is an exquisite, seductive, subtle, and, ultimately, haunting film.

To give you all a point of reference, we're usually reticent to linger in front of mirrors late at night, lest the words "Black Aggie" should come into our unwilling heads, thereby summoning said urban legendress to our reflection (with unknown and highly unbearable consequences). Yet we were able to overcome our irrational fears when, tucked up in our bedroom late at night with a screener of Let the Right One In and a zonked-out bed mate next to us, the power went out on our laptop, leaving us stranded in the middle of a particularly eerie scene. So great was our need to see the end of this film that we crept out of our tiny studio and willingly entered the darkened, eerie, 1920s-era main house -- with its creaks and crackles and mirrored walls (Black Aggie) -- in search of our power cord. Creeping back into the studio out back, we watched the shit out of the rest of this film with every hair raised on our body--loving every minute.

Now, we've been chided for our tendency to up-sell in the past; some of our would-be mentors have suggested saying just enough to incite interest without entering the realm of over-endorsement. So let's put it this way: Let the Right One In is worth seeing. Check it out if you want; or don't. It's entirely up to you.

*We're much more comfortable with the Swedish "Ö" than with the Norwegian "Ø" (not to be racist). See here for further explication.