Låt den rätte komma in

Not that I'm a movie buff at all, but this is one of the best films I've seen in a long time. Directed by Tomas Alfredson, Let The Right One In is so beautiful visually and in sentiment that I just want to watch it over and over again.

The love between the protagonists, Eli and Oskar, is so powerful, their mutual salvation so tangible, and the lessons in human nature so astute, that for once a vampyre movie totally escapes the negative cliches associated with the genre.

Yes, there is blood (lots), people are attacked, people die, people are infected, authorities are powerless. Yes, vampyres spontaneously combust in sunlight, must be invited into a house before they can enter, can see in the dark, survive on human blood. All this is true here as in most vampyre films. The main difference with Alfredson's version, however, is the way all those vampyre cliches are worked into and within a film which speaks - more than of horror and gore - so profoundly of love, loneliness, loyalty, pain, perception and the true nature of cruelty.

All this, and shot in the most mesmerising manner, so acutely angled and focused, so beautifully lit and designed, so perfectly acted and directed, so as to take the viewer on a visual journey parallel to the narrative one, two streams (mixed also with the sonic one) which flow perfectly to meet neatly at the end, leaving no knots tied. No appetite unfed, as it were.