Movies
Let the Right One In (V)
“This is an original and new take on the vampire mythos, with enough regard for legend and folklore to make it a true vampire movie, but still completely removed from the legions of ridiculously uninspired turds that cram up the vampire sections of modern day video stores.”
Let the Right One In just won the critics award at this years Natfilm Festival in Copenhagen, where I attended a screening. Something tells me it’s not gonna win the audience award. See, this is a film you are either gonna love or just find kinda boring. Director Tomas Alfredson stays true to the arthouse-roots he planted with the masterful Four Shades of Brown and steers well clear of formulas and clichés traditionally associated with tales of the nosferatu. I loved it.
With a script written by John Ajvide Lindqvist based on his own novel, the film mixes an emotionally charged tale of prepubescent angst and school bullying with the problems of first love, devotion and the fact that your new-found, twelve-year-old girlfriend is in fact a vampire. We follow twelve-year-old Oskar in suburban Sweden 1982. A pale, skinny and quiet boy, Oskar is the obvious target of daily school-bullying, he’s estranged from his absent mother and only sees his father from time to time. The lonely boy finds a catalyst towards change when a young girl named Eli moves in to the flat next to his and takes interest in his nightly re-enactments of schoolday events – repetitions that always end in Oskar stabbing a tree standing in for head honcho Conny (obviously, Swedish boys who bully can be named Conny). The mysterious Eli looks sick, smells weird and walks about bare feet in the snow – a misfit like Oskar, the two engage in a friendship of sorts.
What follows is not even remotely close to your average fang-flick. Let The Right One In is a vampire movie more along the lines of Claire Denis’ Trouble Every Day, relying on mood, a great storyline and detailed characters, but also employing sarcasm and ironic humour to great effect. Alfredson tells his story at a slow, but masterfully controlled, pace, unravelling bits of information at a time, allowing glimpses inside the suburban Swedish flats that cover the snowy landscape and building momentum for the explosions of bloody violence that hit you like Stuart Gordon scenes edited into a Bergman or Roy Andersson film.
To me, the result is mesmerizing. Beautifully shot and tightly scripted with Alfredson pulling impressive performances from the young cast, this is a movie that not only delivers the goods, but packs it’s blood and mayhem in an original and highly engaging story. Gorehounds will delight in scenes of the kid vampire jumping prey, acid-mutilation and the buckets of blood clumsily filled by Eli’s father, who drugs and bleeds teenage boys. Cinephiles should be satisfied by the impressive technical aspects of the picture, the unforgettable, tragic character of Eli and the subtleties in storytelling. The grotesquery is delivered as if the most everyday of events, bloody murder and homely intrigue weighing equal, and that’s what really sets the film apart. Forget about sensationalistic bullshit and stylistic excess. Let The Right One In has no flying CGI-vampires, no close-ups of fangs erecting in the mouth of the undead, no stakes through the heart, but unlike most vampire-flicks it does have heart, it does have a story and it does have character.
The slow pacing is sure to scare a lot of people of, but if European sensibilities and a complete lack of “action” in the stupid sense of the word doesn’t make you wanna run out the cinema and get home to your Blade or Underworld DVDs and Dracula comic books, then you are in for a treat. This is an original and new take on the vampire mythos, with enough regard for legend and folklore to make it a true vampire movie, but still completely removed from the legions of ridiculously uninspired turds that cram up the vampire sections of modern day video stores.
This week kicked off with the release of hippo horror movie Hungry at home, and four more horror movies have arrived for at-home viewing as we head into the final weekend of June.
Here are the new horror movies that released on Friday, June 26, 2026!
The Halloween season can no longer be contained to the months of September and October, with “Summerween” becoming a thing in recent years. Essentially, it allows for Halloween to bleed into the warmer Summer months, and the first ever Summerween movie has arrived.
The Asylum released Summerween onto Digital outlets today.
In the film from writer/director Ryan Ebert, “On Summerween, a former circus clown escapes a mental institution to return to his abandoned mansion and hunt the teens partying there.”
Cole Chapleski, Chase Breithoff, Logan Roe, Sophia Sabol, and Clint Morrison star.
Director Ryan Ebert is the man behind a string of recent indie horrors we’ve covered, including Shark Side of the Moon, The Jolly Monkey, Jurassic Reborn, and Predator: Wastelands.
A witchy coming-of-age story from Dark Sky Films, Camp is now playing in select theaters.
Check your local listings to find a theater near you.
Camp is from writer-director Avalon Fast (Honeycomb, The Serpent’s Skin).
“Emily is the root cause of two devastating tragedies very early in her life, and she feels the weight of these accidents as though cursed. At her father’s suggestion, she takes a position at a summer camp for troubled youth to ease her guilt. When Emily arrives, she is welcomed by the other counselors, who accept her as she is and surround her with peace and forgiveness.
“As Emily begins to believe in a new kind of life, she starts to hear a voice whispering from deep in the woods — one that urges her to go home, and one that may be impossible to ignore.”
The film stars Zola Grimmer in her screen debut alongside Alice Wordsworth, Cherry Moore, Lea Rose Sebastianis (Castration Movie Part 1 & 2, In A Violent Nature), Ella Reece, Austyn Van de Kamp (This Too Shall Pass), Sophie Bawks-Smith (Honeycomb), Izza Jarvis, and Aiden Laudersmith.
Producers Tyler Perry and Jason Blum have joined forces for Peacock Original Strung.
The film is now streaming only on Peacock.
“A talented violinist takes a prestigious job as a music tutor for the gifted daughter of an influential and enigmatic family. As she becomes entangled in their opulent world, unsettling secrets begin to surface, forcing her to question her safety, her dreams, and even her sanity.”
Malcolm D. Lee (Scary Movie 5, Space Jam: A New Legacy) directs from a script written by Alan B. McElroy (Wrong Turn, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers).
Chloe Bailey (“Swarm“), Lynn Whitfield (Jaws: The Revenge), Lucien Laviscount (“Scream Queens”), Anna Diop (Us), Coco Jones (Vampires vs. the Bronx), Langley Kirkwood (“Banshee”), and Romy Woods star in Peacock’s Strung.
Produced by Diablo Cody, director Meredith Alloway’s Forbidden Fruits brought a new coven of witches to the big screen earlier this year, and it’s now streaming on Shudder.
Lola Tung (“The Summer I Turned Pretty”), Victoria Pedretti (“The Haunting of Hill House”), Alexandra Shipp (Tragedy Girls), Gabrielle Union (Breaking In), and Emma Chamberlain star in Forbidden Fruits, released by IFC and Shudder.
Free Eden employee Apple secretly runs a witchy femme cult in the basement of the mall store after hours. But when new hire Pumpkin challenges the group’s ‘girl boss’ ways, the women are forced to face their own poisons or succumb to a bloody fate.
“Forbidden Fruits grabbed me by the neck the very first time I read it,” Diablo Cody said. “It’s one of the craziest, most creative, beautifully bonkers projects I’ve ever worked on.”
Meagan Navarro writes in her review for Bloody Disgusting, “Forbidden Fruits may not necessarily forge new terrain in the teen satire space, but Alloway brings so much style and energy to her well-cast single-location stage play adaptation for the Gen Z crowd.”
The film is an adaptation of playwright Lily Houghton’s stage play Of the Women Came the Beginning of Sin and Through Her We All Die. Alloway and Houghton co-adapted.
This week’s new release roundups are presented by HUNGRY.
All aboard the swamp tour from hell – this hippo isn’t playing games…
HUNGRY is now available on Digital. Watch it now!
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