THERE is nothing wrong with falling in love with the girl next door; in fact, it’s kind of sweet. Just be sure she’s not a vampire.
In the Swedish thriller “Let the Right One In,” 12-year-old Oskar makes just such a mistake.
A fragile lad, he lives with his mother in a drab, snow-covered suburb. At school, he is regularly bullied by bigger kids.
One night Oskar is in his yard having fun – actually, he’s stabbing a tree with a knife – when he encounters Eli, a dark-haired girl who just moved in next door with her father.
At first glance, she seems to be an odd child. She isn’t fazed by the frigid cold, she never comes out during the day (she sleeps in a bathtub, we later discover) and she immediately warns Oskar, “I cannot be your friend.”
Her arrival in the neighborhood coincides with a series of baffling murders in which victims are hung upside down and drained of blood.
Could a vampire be on the loose? Yes – and Eli, who has been trapped for years inside the body of an adolescent – is the guilty bloodsucker.
Oskar discovers the girl’s secret, but his feelings for the sad-eyed child prevent him from severing their growing attachment.
Vampire movies go back at least as far as the 1922 classic “Nosferatu,” so it is not easy to come up with an unexpected twist.
Credit director Tomas Alfredson and writer John Ajvide Lindqvist with doing so. Their gender-bending invention is both a bloody chiller and a sweet coming-of-age tale.
Despite having no previous film experience, Kare Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson give evocative performances as Oskar and Eli, respectively.
Hoyte Van Hoytema’s bleak and spooky camerawork is perfectly suited to this intelligent horror film. Happy Halloween!
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
The vampire next door.
Running time: 114 minutes. Not rated (violence, gore). At the Angelika, Houston and Mercer streets.
vam@nypost.com