Let the Right One In

First published on 21 Apr 2009. Updated on 2 Jul 2009.

A vampire movie set in Sweden? Don't laugh. If you were a daylight-fearing bloodsucker you wouldn't be spending your winters in the south of France - you'd be heading for the Arctic Circle, where the sun sets at 4pm, and the depressed, vodka-soaked locals are easy pickings on their long walks home in the dark.

The bestselling 2004 novel Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist is a kind of Nordic Twilight. In the freezing gloom of outer Stockholm in 1982, a bullied 12 year old, Oskar, finds an unlikely ally in a girl called Eli who only comes out at night and whose 'father' has a chilling habit of killing locals and draining their blood into plastic bottles.

"The book was an unusual mix between social realism and horror," says Tomas Alfredson, director of the film version. "Before, I was never really so interested in the horror genre and this made it believable in some strange way. And also, the situation the young boy is in, it's heartbreaking to read about, because it was written so very unsentimentally."

Alfredson's film weaves social realism with creeping supernatural dread, paralleling Oskar's schoolyard woes with the community's fear as locals start turning up with their necks slashed. Even though Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) quickly guesses the truth about the bulimic baby-goth next door, he's still attracted to her. "Eli is everything he is not," says Alfredson. "She never lies, she's very brave and very strong. She talks to him and is interested in him, so that is why he isn't afraid of her."

As Eli, Alfredson cast hollow-eyed brunette Lina Leandersson. "Lina is like an old lady captured in this 12-year-old body. She's very calm - I didn't want some sort of circus child." Alfredson also uses some understated CGI effects to convey the 200-year-old, life-draining hag inside the sombre little girl. "Her eyes get bigger when she's hungry," he reveals, "but they are just 10 percent bigger. It disturbs you, and you don't quite know why. Actually, there are over 70 computer-generated shots in the movie, but we've used special effects very subtly."

Despite garnering excellent reviews worldwide and some US$2 million at the Stateside box office, Let the Right One In was not selected as Sweden's entry for the foreign language film Oscar - an award it could well have won. "The Swedish Oscar jury made the calculation to choose another, very fine film, but then it wasn't eligible because of some paperwork mistake.

"A lot of people in the Academy wanted to vote for [Let the Right One In], so that was a big shame."

Let the Right One In screens from 19 Mar.