Winter Sucks 2024: Let the Right One In (2008)
Director: Tomas Alfredson Run Time: 114 min. Release Year: 2008
Starring: Henrik Dahl, Kåre Hedebrant, Karin Bergquist, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar
Country: Sweden
Language: Swedish, Spanish
Winter Sucks 2024 at Gateway Film Center
A collection of the most blood-thinning vampire films of all time
About the film:
Best Narrative Feature at Tribeca Film Festival 2008
Lonely, 12-year-old Oskar is regularly bullied by his stronger classmates. A new friendship develops when Eli, a pale, serious young girl who only comes out at night, moves in next door. Coinciding with her arrival is a series of inexplicable disappearances and murders. As Oskar becomes more aware of Eli’s tragic plight, he cannot forsake her. However, Eli knows that to continue living, she must keep relocating. But when Oskar faces his darkest hour, Eli returns to defend him the only way she can.
“Vampire lore rarely comes across as inspired and alive as it does in this exquisitely crafted film… there’s simply no room for improvement with this one”
—Laura Kern, Film Comment
Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson weaves friendship, rejection and loyalty into a disturbing and darkly atmospheric, yet poetic and unexpectedly tender tableau of adolescence. The feature is based on the best-selling novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist.
About the filmmaker:
Tomas Alfredson is a Swedish writer and director who began his career working in television. Eventually, he joined the Swedish comedy group Killinggänget, a group which specialized in surreal and ironic humor, as a director. Over time, dramatic content gradually came more to the forefront in Alfredson’s projects, and he became known to audiences outside Sweden for his distinctive and disturbing horror thriller, Let the Right One In (2008). Boasting a spare but mesmerizing visual design and atmosphere, and a central relationship that was both touching and disturbingly sinister in its implications, the film was unlike most vampire movies then to date and Alfredson was hailed for his approach to the material.
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