Swedish genre-bender Let the Right One In has been awarded the top prize at the New York based Tribeca Film Festival, further reinforcing the buzz it generated with its Göteborg triumph in January.

Gracefully adapted from the best-selling novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In tracks the gentle motions of a frugal Swedish town, which, like the silent, ever-present snowfall, remains stubbornly serene when talk of a serial killer spreads.

It’s the early eighties. In due spirit a Rubik’s Cube becomes the catalyst of a new friendship between pallid, scrawny schoolboy Oskar and the mysterious girl next door Eli, whose droopy eyes and quiet manners belie a sinister secret.

Eli has been 12 for a very long time.

And in all her veteran experience as a preteen she encourages Oskar to stand up against the school bullies whose daily abuse has become a banal ritual for him. If at times he copes with his new regime, at others he still needs a little help…

Described by Variety magazine as an “idiosyncratic romantic horror-fantasy”, Let the Right One In is a curious mongrel indeed.

It’s a horror film insomuch that there’s blood, and quite a bit of it, but it’s fundamentally not a horrific film.

Never does it draw on violin cacophonies or what’s-in-the-closet shock tactics to impress.

Rather, this is a gentle breed of horror which transforms the entrenched conventions into a new art driven by stunning, emotive cinematography and understated characters who are more than their narrative function.

When killings occur, they are very matter-of-fact, darkly comic even, and above all are incidental to the central coming-of-age interest of the story.

The special effects are elegant and well-judged, though many may flinch to some of the more extravagant designs.

To watch Let the Right One In is to be captivated in an unknown, dreamlike place with childlike wonder. A place where, far from keeping you awake at night, you might think back to as you nod off into your very own dreams.

Let the Right One In is screening on 25 June at Cameo and 27 June at Cineworld.