General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20266 min read

Let the Right One In (film)

Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) is a 2008 Swedish vampire horror film directed by Tomas Alfredson, adapted by John Ajvide Lindqvist from his own 2004 novel of the same name. It follows Oskar, a bullied twelve-year-old boy in a 1980s Stockholm suburb, who befriends Eli, the child vampire who has moved in next door.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Original title	Låt den rätte komma in; English title taken from Morrissey's song "Let the Right One Slip In"³
Director and writer	Tomas Alfredson (director), John Ajvide Lindqvist (screenplay, from his 2004 novel)¹
Setting	The Stockholm suburb Blackeberg in 1982²
Lead cast	Kåre Hedebrant (Oskar), Lina Leandersson (Eli), Per Ragnar (Håkan)⁴
Runtime and premiere	114 minutes; premiered in Sweden in January 2008³
Critical reception	98% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 194 reviews; Metascore 82 on Metacritic⁵^•⁶
Later versions	US remake Let Me In (2010) directed by Matt Reeves; Showtime television series (2022); stage play by Jack Thorne⁷^•⁸^•⁹

Spoilers

Story and setting

The film is set in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm, in 1982. Oskar, twelve years old and bullied by sadistic classmates, dreams of revenge. One winter night in the snow-covered courtyard of his apartment block he meets Eli, a girl of about his own age who has moved in next door with an older man presumed to be her father. Eli cannot appear in sunlight, does not eat ordinary food, must be invited into a room before entering, and needs human blood to live; she is a vampire. As the two lonely children grow close, a series of ritualistic killings, in which victims are tied up, drained of blood, and have their necks broken, unsettles the neighborhood, and Eli's connection to the murders becomes clear to Oskar.²^•⁴^•³

The title comes from Morrissey's song "Let the Right One Slip In", and it also invokes the vampire rule that a vampire must be invited in; the story turns on who Oskar chooses to welcome into his life.³

Production

Alfredson directed the film from a screenplay by Lindqvist, who had written the bestselling novel. Hoyte van Hoytema was the cinematographer, Johan Söderqvist composed the music, Dino Jonsäter edited, and the film was produced by Carl Molinder and John Nordling for the production company EFTI.⁴^•¹⁰ The BFI lists it as a Sweden–Norway–France co-production of 114 minutes.³ Alfredson described the source novel as containing "a strange mixture between the social-realistic style and the vampire stuff", a combination the film preserves.³

Reception

The film premiered in Sweden in January 2008 and gathered wide acclaim. At the Göteborg International Film Festival in February 2008 it received two awards, including the Nordiska Filmpriset, whose citation praised Alfredson for transforming a vampire film into "an original, moving, amusing and warm story of friendship and outsiderhood".¹¹ After its UK release in 2009 it was nominated for the BAFTA for Best Film Not in the English Language and won the equivalent categories at the British Independent Film Awards and the London Critics Circle Film Awards.⁷

Commercial and aggregate figures. In the United States the subtitled film earned over two million dollars during its limited theatrical release, with notable DVD sales; Rotten Tomatoes records a US gross of $2.1 million.⁷^•⁵ On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 98% Tomatometer from 194 reviews and a 90% audience score; the critics' consensus says the film "reinvigorates the seemingly tired vampire genre by effectively mixing scares with intelligent storytelling".⁵ Metacritic assigned a Metascore of 82, based on 30 critic reviews.⁶

The film was not an Oscar contender at the 2009 Academy Awards. Under the rules for the foreign-language category each country may submit only one title, and Sweden put forward Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments, which failed to reach the shortlist.³

Themes and interpretation

Genre hybridity. Scholars have attributed the film's success to the way it merges the horror film, the coming-of-age story, and the realistic socio-psychological drama, drawing on both Swedish film tradition and vampire-film convention.¹² One reading treats the film as an allegory of a declining Swedish folkhem (the Swedish welfare-state ideal), with the suburb standing for a miniature Sweden and the vampire embodying the political, social, and demographic transformations of the country since the 1980s.¹³

Gender and the uncanny. In the novel, Eli is revealed to be a castrated boy, introducing a queer element into the narrative; the Swedish film is less explicit about Eli's sex and gender identification.¹⁴ One study of the film describes Eli as constructed as gender neutral, with Eli's otherness configured as vampirism rather than sexuality.¹⁵ In her analysis of the American remake, Maria Holmgren Troy of Karlstad University contends that each film produces an uncanny effect by bringing horror into the familiar, everyday world embodied in its geographic setting, while she also identifies notable ideological divergences between the American film and the Swedish film and novel with regard to gender and sexuality.¹

Adaptations

The American remake. The success of the Swedish film led Hammer Films to buy the rights to the novel and screenplay, and an English-language remake was quickly commissioned. The directorial job was first offered to Alfredson, who declined; Matt Reeves, director of Cloverfield, was instead brought on to direct and write the screenplay. Let Me In (2010) relocates the action from Stockholm to small-town New Mexico, specifically Los Alamos in the early 1980s, and stars Kodi Smit-McPhee as Owen, Chloë Grace Moretz as Abby, and Richard Jenkins as the older man who keeps Abby supplied with blood.⁷^•¹⁶ Critics were divided: Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian called it a slightly good remake of a very good film and judged it not a patch on the original,¹⁶ while Rotten Tomatoes' summary of reviews records it as "the rare Hollywood remake that doesn't add insult to inspiration".¹⁷ The remake makes Abby clearly female, unlike the ambiguous Eli of the Swedish film and novel.¹⁴

Television and stage. Showtime's series Let the Right One In (2022), a ten-episode adaptation, moves the story to present-day New York City and follows Mark and his daughter Eleanor, locked at age twelve after being turned into a vampire; showrunner Andrew Hinderaker described it as a new story that is "very much a love letter to the film".⁸^•¹⁸ Jack Thorne's full-length stage adaptation, about two hours long with a cast of three women and six men, has been licensed by Concord Theatricals.⁹

References

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026