A man protects, hides, and kills for his vampire daughter in Let the Right One In – streaming on Neon. Based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, which has seen two film adaptations, Amelia Berry writes about the show’s fascinating sci-fi take that sets itself apart.
What’s the one thing that ties together our favourite vampire stories, from Vampire’s Kiss to Twilight to Dracula to What We Do In The Shadows? Setting aside all the blood-sucking and sunlight allergies, really these are stories all about loneliness, and desperation. It’s not easy making friends as a vampire, and who wants to love a being of deep ancient evil? This essential melancholy of vampirism is at the heart of the new adaptation of Let The Right One In.
Our story is centred on Isaiah Cole. An awkward 12-year-old obsessed with card tricks and magic, Isaiah is bullied at school and struggles to be understood by his mother. She’s a homicide detective in the NYPD, currently investigating a series of bizarre and brutal killings. The one ray of light for Isaiah is his new next-door neighbour, Eleanor. What he doesn’t know is that she is a vampire, and she and her father have moved back to New York to try and hunt down a cure.
Meanwhile, a terminally ill pharmaceutical scientist is trying to find his own cure for vampirism, which has left his son in a never-ending state of agony and bloodlust. Could any of this be related to the strange new street drug that’s leaving its users mindlessly craving blood and with prodigious physical strength?
If you’ve read John Ajvide Lindqvist’s original novel, seen the brilliant 2008 Swedish film, or caught the American remake Let Me In, you might be thinking that none of this seems particularly familiar. You’d be absolutely right.
Written by Andrew Hinderaker of Away and Penny Dreadful, this new series of Let The Right One In only adapts the broadest strokes of the original story. There is still a friendship between two 12-year-olds, and one of them is still a vampire. Other than that, Let The Right One In is largely an original story, eschewing the oppressive atmosphere of petty violence and adolescent sexuality that pervades the original in favour of a brooding detective story with a fascinating sci-fi take on the vampire myth.
With shades of Resident Evil, Let The Right One In conceptualises vampirism as a virus. While it’s mostly the same as traditional vampirism, with the fangs, dependence on blood, sensitivity to sunlight, and immense strength, it does mean that there is tantalising potential to cure it through medical means. Not only does this allow for some very cool secret laboratory imagery, but it pushes us to empathise with the vampire characters. Without the element of supernatural evil, vampires are just people who are afflicted, shunned, literally forced into the shadows by their disease.
With this more grounded take on the vampire in hand, the show zeroes in on the psychological drama of its central relationships, taking on the power and frailty of friendship and family.
Eleanor’s father Mark gets the lion’s share of this emotional turmoil. Played with a desperate intensity by A Better Life’s Demián Bichir, Mark is hell-bent on protecting his daughter, whatever the cost. Ten years ago, she was transformed into a vampire. Since then, she and Mark have been on the run, trying to track down the man who turned her in hope of finding a cure. Having to kill or cut himself to feed her, Mark has turned away from all his friends and family, and now is on the verge of alienating even Eleanor herself, so great is his obsessive desire to protect her.
Another character who finds themselves caught at this tragic intersection of familial love and traditional morality is Claire Logan (Grace Gummer from The Newsroom and American Horror Story: Freak Show). An esteemed medical scientist, Claire is estranged from her father because of his involvement with the creation of addictive painkillers, as well as the peculiar ‘death’ of her brother. After her father calls her from his deathbed, she discovers that her brother is still alive, and finds she must come to terms with his pained, vampiric existence.
These kinds of grim catch-22s are pervasive in the world of Let The Right One In. Moody and melancholic, the tone of the show is closer to a muted police procedural than out-and-out horror. With a measured deliberateness, we walk with our characters through a New York that’s colder and emptier than we usually get to see it. An endless expanse of abandoned lots, chain-link fences, and crumbling facades thick with graffiti.
It’s not all sad trudging through snowy streets though, and this isn’t a show that’s afraid of the grotesque. Even just in episode one, we’re treated to a fantastically gruesome scene of a vampire set on fire by the rising sun, and a pretty gnarly mutilated corpse. These effects are wonderfully realised, with something charmingly retro and practical about the way Let The Right One In approaches its visuals. The cinematography too often invokes the cold and sullen crispness of 1970s horror cinema.
For a show about the undead, Let The Right One In has a lot of warmth to it. Much of this comes from the relationship between the two lonely children, Isaiah and Eleanor, with Ian Foreman as Isaiah bringing a particularly heart-wrenching sweetness and awkwardness to his character. Over and over again, this is a show that hammers home how we are driven by our relationships, by our need to protect the people we love.
If you were looking for a repeat of the bleak and agonising horror of the 2008 film, then you’re out of luck. But if you’re open to a spooky sci-fi vampire story, with some big emotional swings and a stack of juicy mysteries, then let me tell you about a little show called Let The Right One In.
