Old-Hat Reviews: Let the Right One In

I have very little control over the movies we see. At least, that's not quite true. I just don't choose to exercise my options. B is the keeper of the NetFlix, and though I have the login and am certainly entitled - nay, encouraged - to add films to our list, I hardly ever bother. With the result that the two DVDs that sit on the TV shelf waiting for our viewing pleasure are usually a delightful surprise to me. Or at least a surprise. Sometimes they're Batman, which is a delightful surprise for someone else.

And then there's NetFlix on Demand, where you don't even have to order the movie, you just press play and - thanks to the wonders of wireless internet - it streams straight to your computer. I'm pretty sure that Let the Right One In had actually been in our house ages ago for some number of weeks before we decided we weren't going to feel like watching it, and sent it back unopened. The other night I found B pressing Play on the NetFlix site and ended up watching the same film and being totally drawn in, if not exactly against my will, then at least without any intent on my part.

All I had known was that it was a vampire movie from Sweden that got excellent reviews as not-the-average-vampire-flick. I don't watch horror films; and if your vampires aren't called Angel or Spike, I'm not terribly interested in them, so you can see why I tended away from this. Also, sometimes you just don't feel up to subtitles.

In fact - and I don't want to give anything away, but I don't think this is going to be a big reveal - this is a sweet and tender teenage love story that deals with how horrible kids can be to one another. The whole vampire thing is somehow at the same time pivotal to the plot and also totally incidental; and even though there's a lot of blood, it's not remotely played for chills, or gore, or anything like that.

We were concerned that everyone in Sweden dresses very peculiarly, but then it turned out that it's set in the early 80s (which explained why I didn't recognise any of the furniture as coming from IKEA; it probably came from early-80s IKEA). The young protagonists are excellently understated, and the whole thing is low-key and unhurried, but not boring. It reminded me a little of The Ice Storm, in feeling as well as fashion. (And weather, I suppose.)

Apparently they're remaking it in American this year as Let Me In: no doubt the actors will be prettier, and it will be interesting to see whether they leave the resolution as it is in the original or feel they need to do something different with it.