Let the Right One In () is a 2008 Swedish romantic horror film directed by Tomas Alfredson and written by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who adapted his 2004 novel. The film tells the story of a bullied 12-year-old boy who develops a friendship with a strange child in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm, in the early 1980s.
A film adaptation of Lindqvist's novel began development in 2004 when John Nordling acquired the rights to produce the project. Alfredson, unconcerned with the horror and vampire conventions, decided to tone down many elements of the novel and focus primarily on the relationship between the two main characters and explore the darker side of humanity. Selecting the lead actors involved a year-long process with open castings held all over Sweden. In the end, Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson were chosen for the leading roles. Leandersson's role in the film was dubbed by Elif Caylan. Principal photography took place in 2007 in Luleå, with additional filming in Blackeberg. The film was produced by EFTI, Sveriges Television and Filmpool Nord, with support from the Swedish Film Institute, Nordisk Film & TV Fond, WAG and Canal+.
Let the Right One In premiered at the Gothenburg Film Festival on 26 January 2008, where it received the Nordic Film Prize. It was released in Sweden on 24 October 2008 by Sandrew Metronome. The film received critical acclaim, with praise for the performances of the two leads, the cinematography, screenplay, and direction. It won several awards, including the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival, as well as four Guldbagge Awards, including Best Director for Alfredson, Best Cinematography for Van Hoytema, and Best Screenplay for Lindqvist. It also won the Saturn Award for Best International Film and the Empire Award for Best Horror Film. At the 63rd British Academy Film Awards, the film was nominated for Best Film Not in the English Language. An American remake, titled Let Me In, was released in 2010.
Plot
Oskar resides with his mother in the Swedish suburb of Blackeberg in 1982. His classmates bully him, and he spends his evenings imagining revenge. One evening, he meets Eli, who appears to be a girl his age. Eli has moved into the adjoining apartment with a man, Håkan. Eli informs Oskar they cannot be friends, but the two begin exchanging coded messages through their shared wall. Eli learns Oskar is being bullied by schoolmates and encourages him to stand up for himself. Oskar then enrolls in exercise classes after school.
Håkan kills a person on a footpath to harvest blood for Eli, but is interrupted by a passerby. Eli is prompted to waylay and kill a man, Jocke. A recluse witnesses the attack from his flat but doesn't report the incident. Håkan hides Jocke's body in a hole in the lake. Håkan makes another effort to obtain blood for Eli by trapping a boy in a room after school. When he is unsuccessful, Håkan pours acid onto his own face to avoid identification. Eli visits Håkan in the hospital, where he offers his own neck for feeding. Eli drains him of his blood, and Håkan falls out the window. Eli goes to Oskar's apartment and spends the night with him, during which they agree to "go steady", though Eli states, "I'm not a girl".
While on a field trip, the bullies again harass Oskar, who this time hits their leader in the head with a pole, injuring him. On that same trip, some of Oskar's classmates discover Jocke's body. Oskar suggests he and Eli should form a bond and cuts his hand. Eli laps up his blood then runs away. Jocke's friend Lacke has a fight with his girlfriend Virginia, and afterward Eli attacks her. She survives but discovers that exposure to sunlight burns her skin. While in the hospital, she asks an orderly to open the blinds in her room, and bursts into flames, committing suicide.
Eli comes to Oskar's apartment and asks to be invited in, but he refuses. Eli then steps inside and starts to bleed profusely, which causes Oskar to relent. Eli admits to being a vampire who must drink human blood to survive, also insisting they both are alike in that Oskar wants to kill and Eli needs to kill, and encourages him to "be me, for a little while." Later when Eli changes clothes, Oskar is shocked to see a horizontal scar across Eli's pubic area with no genitals.
Lacke sets out to kill Eli, whom he finds asleep in the apartment's bathtub. Oskar intervenes, and Eli wakes up and feeds on Lacke's blood. Afterward, Eli thanks Oskar and kisses him. Fearing they've attracted too much attention from the neighbors, Eli decides it isn't safe to stay and leaves that night. Oskar is lured out to resume the program at the pool. One of the bullies holds Oskar under the water. Eli arrives and rescues him by killing and dismembering the bullies, except for one, who is left sobbing on a bench.
Oskar is seen travelling on a train, with Eli in a box beside him. Eli taps the code for "kiss" to Oskar, who responds the same.
Cast
Production Development
The film project started in late 2004 when John Nordling, a producer at the production company EFTI, contacted Ajvide Lindqvist's publisher Ordfront to acquire the rights for a film adaptation of his novel, Let the Right One In: "At Ordfront they just laughed when I called, I was like the 48th they put on the list. But I called John Ajvide Lindqvist and it turned out we had the same idea of what kind of film we should make. It wasn't about money, but about the right constellation". A friend introduced Tomas Alfredson to the novel. While he normally does not like to receive books, because "it's a private thing to choose what to read", he decided after a few weeks to read it. The depiction of bullying in the novel affected Alfredson deeply. "It's very hard and very down-to-earth, unsentimental (...) I had some period when I grew up when I had hard times in school (...) So it really shook me", he told the Los Angeles Times. Ajvide Lindqvist already knew Alfredson's previous work, and he and Alfredson discovered that they "understood each other very well".
In addition to EFTI, co-producers included Sveriges Television and the regional production-centre Filmpool Nord. The production involved a total budget of around 29 million SEK, including support from the Swedish Film Institute, Nordisk Film & TV Fond, WAG, and Canal+.
Screenplay Lindqvist had insisted on writing the screenplay himself. Alfredson, who had no familiarity with the vampire and horror genres, initially expressed skepticism at having the original author do the adaptation, but found the result very satisfying. Many of the minor characters and events from the book were removed, and focus directed primarily on the love story between the two leads. In particular, many aspects of the character Håkan, including him being a paedophile, were toned down, and his relationship with Eli was mostly left open to interpretation. Alfredson felt that the film could not deal with such a serious theme as pedophilia in a satisfying manner, and that this element would detract from the story of the children and their relationship. Still, the film provided a few hints, of which Alfredson mentions one in the director's comments (Håkan likes children, for the wrong reasons).
A key passage in the novel details what happens when a vampire enters a room uninvited, an action that traditional vampire lore usually prohibits. Alfredson originally wanted to omit this from the film, but Ajvide Lindqvist was adamant that it had to be included. Alfredson was initially nervous about the scene. He realised in post-production that the sound effects and music made it "American, in a bad way", and had to be removed for the scene to work. The result, which shows Eli slowly beginning to bleed from her eyes, ears, and pores, received positive notices from many critics. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian described it as a "haemophilia of rejection".
The novel presents Eli as an androgynous boy, castrated centuries before by a sadistic vampire nobleman. The film handles the issue of Eli's gender more ambiguously: a brief scene in which Eli changes into a dress offers a glimpse of a suggestive scar but no explicit elaboration. An actress plays Eli's character, but her voice was considered to be too high-pitched, so it was dubbed by voice actress Elif Ceylan. According to an interview with the director, as the film was originally conceived, flashbacks explained this aspect in more detail, but these scenes were eventually cut. Other explicit supernatural elements from the book—such as physical transformations and flight—were also omitted from the screenplay. In the end, Ajvide Lindqvist was satisfied with the adaptation. When Alfredson showed him eight minutes of footage for the first time, he "started to cry because it was so damn beautiful". He subsequently described the film as a "masterpiece". "It doesn't really matter that [Alfredson] didn't want to do it the way I wanted it in every respect. He could obviously never do that. The film is his creative process", he said.
Casting and filming Casting of the lead actors took almost a year, with open castings held all over Sweden. Kåre Hedebrant, selected to audition for the role as Oskar after an initial screening at his school, eventually landed the role. Lina Leandersson responded to an online advertisement seeking a 12-year-old boy or girl "good at running". After three more auditions, she was selected to play Eli.
Alfredson has described the casting process as the most difficult part of making the film. He had particular concerns about the interaction between the two leads, and the fact that those who had read the book would have a preconceived notion of how the characters were supposed to look. He wanted the actors to look innocent, and be able to interact in front of the camera. They were supposed to be "mirror images of each other. She is everything he isn't. Dark, strong, brave, and a girl. (...) Like two sides of the same coin." On another occasion, Alfredson stated that "[c]asting is 70 percent of the job; it's not about picking the right people to make the roles. It is about creating chords, how a B and A minor interact together, and are played together." In the end, Alfredson expressed satisfaction with the result, and has frequently lauded Hedebrant and Leandersson for being "extremely intelligent", "incredibly wise", and "unprecedentedly fantastic."
Although the film takes place in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm, principal photography took place in Luleå (in the north of Sweden) to ensure enough snow and cold weather. The area where the filming took place dated from around the same time as Blackeberg, and has similar architecture. However, Alfredson shot a few scenes in the Blackeberg area. In particular, the scene where Eli leaps down on Virginia from a tree, was shot in the town square of Blackeberg. Another scene, where Eli attacks Jocke in an underpass, was shot in the nearby suburb of Råcksta. The original Blackeberg underpass that Lindqvist had envisioned was deemed too high to fit in the picture. Some of the outdoor close-up scenes were made in a super cold studio. The jungle gym where much of the interaction between Oskar and Eli takes place was constructed specifically for the film. Its design was intended to suit the CinemaScope format better than a regular jungle gym, which would typically have to be cropped height-wise.