A mere two years after this original movie, Let The Right One In
was released, Hollywood is already cashing in on its coattails with the remake, Let Me In and so the
original has been given a re-release to tie-in, which I'm very glad about as I never got to see this until now.
The story begins with a rather unconventional young blonde lad called Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant, below-right), who, we learn
in his class, likes to read a lot about death. A shifty-looking old man, Håkan (Per Ragnar) and his 12-year-old
daughter, Eli (Lina Leandersson, right), move in next door, he boards up the windows and starts behaving in a bizarre
manner that seems to fit with the assumptions you'd make about such a man who looks like that. And, at least, the
other residents assume she is her daughter, but we twig different given the tagline to the movie about how she's
been 12 for the last 200 years.
In an early scene, Håkan is hanging about in the woods, strikes up a conversation with a man walking through and
promptly gases him unconscious with halotane, hangs him upside down from a tree, then drains his blood into a
container. However, he gets startled by a couple's dog coming up to him, so he heads off and has to leave the
corpse to be discovered in its gory state.
It's not long before Oskar meets Eli and in their brief chat, she tells him they can't be friends. He can sense
there's something up with her because he lends her his Rubik's Cube which she returns to him solved two days
later, after stating that she's never used one before. Over time, they do strike up a strange kind of bond, and
all I'll say about the rest of the film is that there's a sub-plot about Oskar being bullied by a lad at his school
called Conny (Patrik Rydmark), but it really is best if you discover everything else about it for yourself.
Let The Right One In is a film where every member of the cast gives it their all, especially the two young
leads. I did wonder, also, when the film was set as it appears to be around the early '80s, given the content of one particular
radio broadcast within. I later found that the film is set February 1982, with the novel in October/November 1981.
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Blu-ray: 
Presented in the original 2.35:1 theatrical ratio and in 1080p high definition, the picture perfectly paints a
grim Swedish town in the early 80s, largely devoid of beauty and where everyone lives in apartments that have
dated 1950s design. That said, the image is quite stunning to look at.
For the record, I'm watching on a Panasonic 37" Plasma screen via a Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray player.
