Let the Right One In at TFF

You might think the world doesn't need another Swedish child-vampire love story movie, but Let the Right One In, screening right now at the Tribeca Film Festival, just might change your mind. Adapted from the book by John Lindqvist, Let the Right One In is a remarkable tonal balancing act, easily moving between the viscerally horrifying and the delicately sweet as it tells the story of a 12-year-old outcast whose revenge fantasies about his school-bully tormentors get mixed up with his growing affection for his mysterious new neighbor. It sounds like it shouldn't work, but it does, in large part due to the beautiful cinematography that emphasizes the flashes of colorful life beneath the relentless gray-and-white of 1980s Stockholm. In the Q-and-A afterward, Lindqvist said that his book is autobiographical "except for one crucial difference," and the movie succeeds most as a frightening exploration of adolescent ostracism and violence. It's already set for an American remake, but it's hard to picture Hannah Montana going for someone's jugular.