Last week, I watched the Swedish independent horror film Let The Right One In. It’s an unusually smart little film, particularly for the horror genre these days, and it’s probably the best vampire film I’ve seen since Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos (1993). Or maybe Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (1987). Its approach to horror is to come at us through character rather than through gore or trickery (which is not to say it doesn’t have some of those too), and in ways it reminds me of the works of Val Lewton in the 1940s.

I recommend it highly. But that’s not the point of this entry.

No, the point of it is, turns out I was fortunate to see the movie on the original Swedish screener DVD. The US release of the film on DVD/Blu-Ray last week turns out to have been something even more scary than the movie itself: a dumbed down version of the movie itself. Continue reading →