"I'm 12," pale faced Eli (Lina Leandersson) tells Oskar (Kare Hedebrant), the androgynous looking blonde pre-teen who lives next door with his mother in a dreary suburban Stockholm apartment block. Then she adds, "but I've been 12 for a very long time." She only comes out at night, she doesn't feel the cold, she smells funny and, yes, she's a vampire.

Adapted from Swedish author John Lindqvist's bestseller (its title taken from a Morrissey song), set in a snowy 1982 this is essentially an arthouse gender reversal Twilight. Except, conspicuously more intelligent, far darker and, ultimately, with a much more complex love story between two social outcasts.

Bullied at school and with emotionally remote divorced parents, Oskar indulges his revenge fantasies by stabbing a tree pretending it's his pint-sized tormentor (Patrik Rydmark) and morbidly keeping a scrapbook about bloody crimes. Shortly after the mysterious Eli moves in, he's got a new batch of cuttings about a series of gruesome murders, notably that of a teenager found strung upside down with his throat cut. The killer is Hakan, not, as Oskar assumed, Eli's father, but rather the harvester of the blood (thickly black rather than red) she needs to survive.

However, when a bungled attempted murder leaves her alone, she's forced to seek her own nourishment among the local drunks and losers. The tentative friendship between her and Oskar also intensifies ("will you be my girlfriend" he asks, seconds after she's revealed her true nature), drawn together by a common loneliness as they, in turn, become each other's protector, climaxing in a scene of silent, bloody payback in the school swimming baths.

There's plenty of blood and a couple of very striking illustrations of what happens if a vampire's exposed to light or (in a scene of piercing emotion) enters uninvited, but horror isn't the film's real concern.
Rather it's a spare, subdued but deeply intense coming of age tale of rage, sexual awakening, friendship, empathy, romantic self-sacrifice and salvation, beautifully photographed in wintry tones with terrific performances from the two young leads who imbue their characters with a shuddering creepiness yet have you wanting to reach out and hug away their pain.
With depressing inevitability, an American remake by Cloverfield's Matt Reeves is in the works. Don't wait for that, see the original masterpiece before Hollywood drains all its blood.