Search Results

This chapter introduces the Swedish vampire film, Låt den rätte komma (Let the Right One In), which not only stands out from contemporary vampire films, but ranks among the very best vampire movies of the past century. The chapter mentions director Tomas Alfredson and screenwriter John Ajvide Lindqvist, who adapted Låt den rätte komma from his own novel of the same name. It also mentions a song by the lugubrious British rock singer-songwriter Morrissey as Lindqvist's inspiration for the title of his novel 'Let the Right One Slip In'. It recounts Let the Right One In's world premiere on 26 January 2008 at the Göteborg International Film Festival in Sweden and screening at other festivals in Europe, North America, Australia and South Korea. The chapter explains why Let the Right One In stands head and shoulders above other recent horror movies like Twilight from 2008.

This chapter speculates on the approach when the romanticized notions about vampires are removed as shown in Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In. The chapter analyses the miserable and lonely existence of a child who is stuck forever in a 12-year-old body and has to walk around killing other people and drinking their blood to live. It also talks about the acknowledgement of Let the Right One In as a modern classic and in a class of its own that is distinct from other contemporary vampire and horror movies. The chapter mentions Philip French in The Observer who described Let the Right One In as a major addition to the vampire genre. It also reviews several new twists on the old traditions and elements of coming-of-age stories, childhood fantasy, and serial-killer movies seen in Let the Right One In.

This chapter compares Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In with Anders Banke's Frostbiten (2006), the only other non-porn Swedish vampire movie to date. It examines how Frostbiten takes a larkier, more scattershot approach to the horror genre. It also reviews how Frostbiten begins with snow falling and is followed with a prologue set in Ukraine in 1944, where five soldiers are attacked in the dark by a mysterious creature. The chapter describes Frostbiten as a sloppy but mostly lively horror comedy with its plotting, camerawork and framing that seems arbitrary, and numerous scenes serving no particular function other than half-hearted attempts to convey a bond between mother and daughter. It points out how the plot of Frostbiten turns on repeated instances of people willingly swallowing a drug without knowing what it is.

This chapter recounts how Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In begins with a black screen with simple white credits and the title of the film in red, which are colors that are predominant in the film. The chapter probes the typography of the title that was arranged in a configuration reminiscent of 1950s modernism, the era in which the housing estate that provides the film with its central setting was constructed. It also talks about the black of night and the darkness of Eli's hair and eyes that contrast with the light of Oskar's blondness and the snow, which reflect the light and dark within their own personalities. The chapter discusses the color red as the red of blood that was used sparingly but effectively throughout Let the Right One In. It mentions falling snow followed by snow stained with red blood as the first moving image in Let the Right One In.

This chapter discusses Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In as one of the best new horror films since the genre's last great creative flourishing in the 1970s. It highlights some of Let the Right One In's back story and compares it with other horror movies made in the 1990s or the 2000s, such as The Lost Boys (1987), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1993), and Blade (1998) as venerable classics of vampire cinema. It also describes Let the Right One In's Eli as a type of vampire that is very different to Twilight's (2008) Edward Cullen, the undead hero. The chapter reviews movie vampires that come in all shapes and styles, and the vampire myth that is both durable and flexible enough to embrace many different permutations. It cites a vampire that appeared in an episode of Doctor Who called Journey Into Terror in 1965.

This chapter explains how horror stories have dabbled in parts of the human condition that more respectable mainstream culture dares not touch. It considers vampire movies and books that provide an indirect way of dealing with the sort of subjects that are still regarded in certain quarters as taboo or upsetting to discuss outside the psychiatrist's office, such as sex, death, and intimacy. It also points out how the subtext of the vampire has changed over the years according to the social and sexual mores, political situations, religious beliefs, and fashions of the day. The chapter talks about how crucifixes, holy water and wafers lost potency of their symbolism, though crucifixes are still displayed for superstitious reasons or as fashion accessories. It discusses Eli in Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In, whose name is loaded with religious significance as the name of an Old Testament prophet.

This chapter explains why vampirism is often seen as a metaphor for capitalist exploitation as vampires are often portrayed to prey on the weak. It analyses movie monsters, especially vampires, that have always offered a multiplicity of metaphors that are sometimes overlapping or purely subjective. It also explores the metaphors in Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In, which are less obvious than usual films and leaves deeper meanings open to individual interpretation. The chapter focuses on the need of a vampire for human assistance as it is a creature unable to tolerate sunlight, but nevertheless wants to live among humans inevitably. It emphasizes the many tasks of a vampire's human assistance, such as Oskar's character in Let the Right One In who guards Eli against her enemies during daylight hours.

This chapter looks at vampire movies that became a metaphor for drug addiction in films like Martin, Near Dark and Abel Ferrara's The Addiction from 1995. It recounts how AIDS hit the headlines in the 1980s and sex was once again regarded as a dangerous pursuit after a couple of decades of unfettered sexual liberation. It also explains the vampire life-and-death cycle that offered a convenient way of dramatizing the idea of a virus transmissible through body fluids, leading to extreme physical changes and death. The chapter cites the scene in Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In when Virginia is bitten and says to Lacke that a kid has infected her somehow. It describes Lucy Westenra in Bram Stoker's Dracula as the first and one of the best-known transformation of human into vampire.

This chapter reviews traditional vampire films that can have only one ending, where the vampire is destroyed either by being staked through the heart, decapitated, exposed to daylight, or burned. It examines the interpretation of the ending of Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In as a non-traditional vampire film. It also discusses one of the first false endings in Let the Right One In, which has no dialogue, just the poignant music accompanying a montage, scored and edited in such a way that it seems final. The chapter covers the endings of Roman Polanski's films where the protagonist comes full circle and ends up where he or she started, sadder but none the wiser for the experiences. It recounts that the real ending of Let the Right One In can be interpreted as a new beginning as Oskar and Eli left on their way to a new life.

This chapter discusses traditional vampires that live in large cob-webbed castles or crumbling stately mansions or sometimes dabble in real estate or property development, such as in the film The Satanic Rites of Dracula in 1973. The chapter points out how vampires are generally depicted as wealthy individuals who rarely have to worry about income or housing. It also considers the Twilight movies, where the Cullen 'family' resides not in a castle or old dark house but an airy modern Frank Lloyd Wright-esque home. The chapter reviews the character Eli in Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In, who contents herself with a bog-standard flat on a Swedish housing estate where she customizes the bathroom to turn it into a light-tight nest. It explores Eli and Håkan's flat that bears all the hallmarks of an environment where the occupants have lost interest in the superficial trappings of life.

This chapter talks about Oskar's school in Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In, which is introduced by an establishing shot and framed by the entrance to an underpass. The chapter explains how establishing shots play a role that is more important than merely labelling the location or providing rhythmic punctuation. It also considers the passing of an entire day in Let the Right One In, which is conveyed with a single brief scene of Oskar in the classroom or being bullied. The chapter points out the daylight scenes that seem to become even shorter, almost perfunctory, while the night-time or Eli's domain become increasingly dominant as the story progresses. It highlights Håkan in John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel of Let the Right One In, who is unambiguously a paedophile and a former teacher who was fired from his job and became a vagrant until 'rescued' by Eli.

This chapter probes the public fascination with vampires caused by the panoply of rules and rituals that have arisen around them, such as drinking blood, casting no reflection, or turning into other creatures. It demonstrates how vampire films and novels often ring changes on the rules and rituals, but still pay lip-service to some or all of them to some degree. It also describes Eli in Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In, whose condition of drinking blood and avoiding sunlight to survive is explained by a non-supernatural medical condition, such as porphyria. The chapter reviews one of the key scenes in Let the Right One In when Oskar asks Eli what would happen if she came into his flat without an invitation, and she proceeds to show him. It explains the vampire's need for an invitation as an invention of Bram Stoker.

This chapter talks about vampire movies of the 1960s that did not follow the Hammer template of the Van Helsing-esque agent defeating evil. It describes Mario Bava's Black Sunday from 1960 as a more oneiric version of the vampire myth in which the sage doctor character turned himself into a vampiric demon after resuscitating the vampire-like witch. It also mentions Jean Rollin, who directed a series of erotic vampire films in which there was an opposition to his predominantly female and lesbian vampires, but without old sages to threaten them with a good staking. The chapter highlights the irreverent approach and ironic dénouement of the Anglo-American horror comedy Dance of the Vampires, which is more in tune with revisionist 1970s film-making than with the typical Hammer tale of dark desires being defeated. It refers to the character Lacke, who fills the vampire-slayer's role in Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In.