When you think about it - and it's difficult to stop thinking about it, such is its subtle, indelible tinting of your world - one of the most astounding things about Let the Right One In is that it is a horror film. It doesn't subvert the genre, it doesn't twist its well-worn rules; it embraces all of that fully, punctuating the two-ish hours with acts of shuddering violence, albeit that we're shielded from full view of most of those acts. It is a horror film, pure and simple.
And yet, the words that it requires of you are from a different world entirely. The one that won't let go is "exquisite", for there is so much here that is the very antithesis of crass, dumb shock-value cinema of any genre. There is so much here that's so delicate and tightly-coiled that you barely dare breathe; it's that tension, the tension of the awkward, difficult, desperate friendship at the heart of the story, which leaves you drained by the end.
The film circles silently around that twelve-year-old friendship as it evolves. An astonishing use of depth-of-field echoes our and their nervousness, the camera feeling its way through each scene by bringing different elements sharply into focus and then letting them slip, never daring to linger for too long. As a work of art, even at its most bloody, it feels every bit as fragile as those held inside it.
Horror has never been this intimate, has rarely been as concerned with the tragedy of its characters' lives. And cinema has rarely been used to capture a chilling, icy loneliness so perfectly.
Exquisite.
