13 Days of First-Time Frights: Let the Right One In

13 Days of First-Time Frights is a series of reviews for October 2019 where Douglas Laman, in the spirit of Halloween, watches and writes about thirteen horror movies he's never seen before. These reviews will be posted each Tuesday and Thursday as well as the last three Wednesdays of October 2019.

Entry #13: Let the Right One In

Remember a decade back when vampires were just everywhere in the worldwide pop culture scene? This was during peak-Twilight mania, so some of it was people trying to capitalize with what cool with the kids in that point in time but a good chunk of it was stuff created totally independently of Edward and Bella, leading to an odd confluence of events that led to a lot of vampire media being released over the span of a few years. Let the Right One In, a Swedish horror film from director Tomas Alfredson based on a 2004 novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist (the author also writes the screenplay here), was one example of a vampire movie released in this vampire-centric era that was made totally divorced from any influence of Twilight (it was even released a whole month prior to the first Twilight movie!)

The Snowman Is A Frosty Murder Mystery Misfire

Do you want to build a snowman? C'mon, your snowman can't turn out any worse than Tomas Alfredson's new thriller The Snowman, a film that clearly was meant to be a snowy Silence Of The Lambs but ends up being more incoherent than anything else. The premise of The Snowman, alas, does not revolve around a crime-solving snowman, but rather Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender, and yes, multiple characters solemnly intone that name throughout the film) taking time away from his favorite past time of drinking booze and passing out on playground equipment so that he can concentrate on a local missing person case, with the individual that's missing being a mother who's having marriage troubles.