Let the Right One In
Let the Right One In is a 2008 Swedish vampire film directed by Tomas Alfredson.
The horror is the grooming of a lonely child by something very old, and the film is clear about it.
goreledger editorial rating: 9/10 · Read the review
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A twelve-year-old boy is bullied at school in a Stockholm suburb in 1982. A girl moves in next door, only comes out after dark, and is not twelve.
The romance reading is the popular one and the film keeps quietly undermining it. Eli travels with an adult man who kills people to feed her, and who is visibly worn out by the arrangement. Work out what he was when he met her and the last shot stops being sweet.
Tomas Alfredson shoots the snow and the concrete with total flatness, which makes the few violent moments land harder than any amount of staging would. The swimming pool sequence is filmed from underwater in one shot and is the best-directed scene in modern vampire cinema.
Two things to know. The Swedish original subtitles on the first Region 1 release were rewritten and much worse; make sure you have the theatrical translation. And the American remake, Let Me In, is very good, which almost never happens.
Goreledger editorial rating
9 / 10
Flat, cold direction makes the few violent moments land harder, and the film is clear-eyed about the grooming at its centre. The underwater pool sequence is superbly directed.
Our opinion, not an average. How we rate
Goreledger editorial profile
Describes the film, not its quality: high gore means very gory.
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Trailer
The sleeves
The same film, sold as a different film in each territory. Click any of them.
Where to watch
Canada
Germany
Finland
UK
USA
Legal sources only. Availability data from JustWatch via TMDB.
Checked 9 Aug 2026
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