114 mins |
Rated
R16 (Violence & content that may disturb)
Directed by Tomas Alfredson
Starring Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar, Ika Nord, Peter Carlberg
Playing as part of Academy's FROSTY FLICKS Film Series of wintery, ice-cold classics September 08-24.
It's the 15th anniversary of this striking, original addition to the vampire genre which is now considered somewhat of a modern horror classic!
The supremely creepy LET THE RIGHT ON IN introduces the melancholic allure of the lonely vampire to a Swedish junior high school in winter 1982. Achingly attuned to the bristling hypersensitivities of its preteen protagonists, the film rhymes the miseries of two soulmates: the ravenous vampire girl who can never die and the 12-year-old boy who can never fit in. By day young Oskar is the victim of relentless bullying. By night he dreams of revenge. He fills a notebook with details of the gruesome blood-lettings that have set neighbourhood nerves on edge. Eli, the new girl next door, seems just as much a misfit: she never feels the cold, she smells weird, she can‘t enter a room unless she‘s invited, but she understands Oskar like no one has before. The terrifying world she draws him into is depicted by director Tomas Alfredson with a cool plain style that chills.
— Bill Gosden, NZIFF former director
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Playing as part of Academy's FROSTY FLICKS Film Series of wintery, ice-cold classics September 08-24.
It's the 15th anniversary of this striking, original addition to the vampire genre which is now considered somewhat of a modern horror classic!
The supremely creepy LET THE RIGHT ON IN introduces the melancholic allure of the lonely vampire to a Swedish junior high school in winter 1982. Achingly attuned to the bristling hypersensitivities of its preteen protagonists, the film rhymes the miseries of two soulmates: the ravenous vampire girl who can never die and the 12-year-old boy who can never fit in. By day young Oskar is the victim of relentless bullying. By night he dreams of revenge. He fills a notebook with details of the gruesome blood-lettings that have set neighbourhood nerves on edge. Eli, the new girl next door, seems just as much a misfit: she never feels the cold, she smells weird, she can‘t enter a room unless she‘s invited, but she understands Oskar like no one has before. The terrifying world she draws him into is depicted by director Tomas Alfredson with a cool plain style that chills.
— Bill Gosden, NZIFF former director