DVD: Let the Right One In, For retail & rental, (Paramount)

When is a horror film not a horror film? When it's a sober social drama about life in a concrete Stockholm suburb in the 1980s, and when it's a sensitive portrait of the friendship which develops between two lonely children - one of whom happens to be a vampire. There are bursts of black comedy and some ingeniously choreographed throat-biting, but LTROI never gives way to horror cliche. It's the wintry atmosphere that lingers as much as the severed heads.