A vampire (film) in New York

The Tribeca Film Festival announced a bunch of titles this week for their upcoming festival. A few meh films in here but one stand out that I must recommend, the Swedish vampire film LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. I saw the film in Rotterdam and mentioned it briefly earlier here.

This brilliant and chilling vampire movie arrives from the cold city blocks of Sweden and proceeds to stomp snow all over the screen. The clever premise here is that a young boy (who is being bullied at school) gets a new neighbor one night in his apartment building. It’s an older man who seems to be living with a girl his age. Well slowly and coldly it is revealed that the girl is a vampire and the man is her familiar, doing anything for his devoted child queen, including pouring acid over his face in a memorable scene to avoid being identified and linked to her. Yes this is a movie with some gruesome scares but the main strengths came from the killer script (based on a bestselling novel) and the standout performances especially from the main girl who has an otherworldly and older quality, which makes her role impossible to remake. It’s a chilling, daring and terrifying tale that is a real crowd pleaser even while not ending quite where one might expect.

The title of the film comes from a Smiths song. If you are gonna be in NYC during Tribeca, I highly recommend this one.