Movie Review: “Let the Right One In”

Lina Leandersson  in “Let the Right One In.”

Rating: 88 

When it’s not being played strictly for visceral shocks, vampirism symbolizes the plight of the “other,” the outcast who cannot control that inextricable trait that sets her or him apart. So it only makes sense that “Let the Right One In” would succeed as a story about teenage outcasts, since few films get to the heart of adolescent alienation, and do it so chillingly.

In this Swedish import showing Thursday through Sunday at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) is a pre-teen living with his divorced mother in a dreary Stockholm apartment complex. Constantly preyed upon by bullies and unnoticed by most others, Oskar can only fantasize about exacting revenge against his tormentors. But Eli (Lina Leandersson), the sunken-eyed 12-year-old girl next door, has bigger problems. She must send her father — if he is, in fact, her father — out to kill for her by hanging victims upside down and letting the blood seep from their bodies.