Let the Right One In (Swedish: Låt den rätte komma in) is a 2008 Swedish romantic horror film directed by Tomas Alfredson. It is based on the novel of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the screenplay for the film.
The title refers to the Morrissey song "Let the Right One Slip In" (featured on the Viva Hate special edition album) but also to the aspect of vampire folklore which says that vampires cannot enter a house unless invited.
The American version is called Let Me In because the publishers requested that Lindqvist change the title as they believed it was too long. A paperback with the original title was later released to promote the film
It tells the story of a bullied 12-year-old boy who develops a friendship with a vampire child in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm, in the early 1980s. Alfredson, unfamiliar with the horror and vampire genres, decided to tone down many elements of the novel and focus primarily on the relationship between the two main characters. Selecting the lead actors involved a year-long process with open castings held all over Sweden. In the end, then 11-year-olds Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson were chosen for the leading roles. They were subsequently commended by both Alfredson and film reviewers for their performances.
The film received widespread international critical acclaim and won numerous awards, including the "Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature" at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival and the European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation's 2008 Méliès d'Or (Golden Méliès) for the "Best European Fantastic Feature Film", as well as four Guldbagge Awards from the Swedish Film Institute. Due to the film's initial success at various film festivals, the rights for an English-language remake of the film sold before the film had its theatrical release. Matt Reeves, who praised both the film and the novel, and expressed that he felt a strong personal connection to the story, will direct the remake, slated for release in 2010.

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 adaption of Ajvide Lindqvist's novel. "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 doesn't like to receive books, because "it's a private thing to choose what to read", he decided to read it after a few weeks. He was deeply affected by the depiction of bullying in the novel. "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 was already familiar with 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 of the film involved a total budget of around 29 million SEK, including support from the Swedish Film Institute and Nordisk Film- & TV Fond.

Screenplay
Ajvide 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 was very satisfied with the end result. 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 pedophile, were removed, and his relationship with Eli was 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.
A key passage in the novel details what happens when a vampire enters a room uninvited, an action that something 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 realized 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 end 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. A female actress plays Eli's character, but Eli tries to tell Oskar "I'm not a girl" when Oskar asks that Eli be his girlfriend. 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. 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 of the lead actors took almost a year, with open castings held all over Sweden. Kåre Hedebrant was selected to audition for the role as Oskar after an initial screening at his school, and eventually landed the role. Lina Leandersson responded to an online advertisement seeking a 12-year old boy or girl who "was 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 Råcksta.The original Blackeberg underpass that Lindqvist had envisioned was deemed too high to fit in the picture. Due to the extreme cold, many of the outdoor close-up scenes were made in a 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.
Most of the filming used a single, fixed, Arri 535B camera, with almost no handheld usage, and few cuts. Tracking shots relied on a track-mounted dolly, rather than Steadicam, to create calm, predictable camera movement.
The crew paid special attention to lighting. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema and director Tomas Alfredson invented a technique they called "spray light". In an interview, van Hoytema describes it as follows: "If you could capture dull electrical light in a can and spray it like hairspray across Eli's apartment, it would have the same result as what we created". For the emotional scenes between Oskar and Eli, van Hoytema consistently diffused the lighting.

Post-production
The film contains around 50 shots with computer-generated imagery. Alfredson wanted to make them very subtle and almost unnoticeable. The sequence where multiple cats attack Virginia, one of the most complicated scenes to film, required several weeks of drafting and planning. A combination of real cats, stuffed cats and computer-generated imagery was employed.
The film features analogue sound-effects exclusively throughout. The lead sound-designer Per Sundström explained: "The key to good sound effects is working with natural and real sounds.(...) These analogue sounds can be digitally reworked as much as necessary, but the origin has to be natural".^[25] The soundscape was designed to come as close to the actors as possible, with audible heartbeats, breathing, and swallowing. Late in production it was also decided to overdub actress Lina Leandersson's voice with a less feminine one, to underline the backstory. "She's 200 years old, not twelve. We needed that incongruity. Besides, it makes her menacing", Sundström said. Both men and women up to the age of forty auditioned for the role. After a vote, the film team ended up selecting Elif Ceylan, who provides all of Eli's spoken dialogue. Footage of Ceylan eating melon or sausage was combined with various animal noises to emulate the sound of Eli biting into her victims and drinking their blood.
The sound crew won a Guldbagge Award for Best Achievement from the Swedish Film Institute, for the "nightmarishly great sound" in the film.

Soundtrack
Swedish composer Johan Söderqvist wrote the score. Alfredson instructed him to write something that sounded hopeful and romantic, in contrast to the events that take place in the film. Söderqvist has described the outcome as consisting of both darkness and light, and emphasized melody and harmony as the most important qualities of the music. It is performed by the The Slovak National Symphony Orchestra. The score placed fourth on Ain't it Cool News' Top 10 Best Scores Of 2008 List, being described as "scrupulously weaving together strains of bone-chillingly cold horror with the encompassing warmth of newly acquired love". If magazine described the score as "the most beautifully emotional score yet to grace the undead. It's a feeling of tender melancholy that delivers its scares in a subtle, chamber orchestra way".
The song "Kvar i min bil", written and performed by Per Gessle, resonates repeatedly through the film. Originally an outtake from Gessle's solo album En Händig Man, the song was specially provided for the film, to resemble the sound of popular 1980s pop group Gyllene Tider. Gessle has described the song as a "bluesy tune with a nice guitar hook". Other songs in the film include "Försonade" from 1968, written and performed by future ABBA member Agnetha Fältskog, and "Flash in the Night" from 1981, written by Tim Norell and Björn Håkansson and performed by Secret Service.
On November 11, 2008, MovieScore Media released the film soundtrack in a limited edition of 500 copies. It contains 21 of Söderqvist's original scores from the film.

Release: Theatrical
Let the Right One In received its first performance at the Göteborg International Film Festival in Sweden on 26 January 2008 where Alfredson won the Festival's Nordic Film Prize. It subsequently played at several other film festivals, including the Tribeca Film Festival in New York (24 April 2008), where it won the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature, the Edinburgh Film Festival on 25 Jun 2008 where it won the Rotten Tomatoes Critical Consensus Award, and the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival in Switzerland on 3 July 2008 where it won the Méliès d'Argent (Silver Méliès).
The Swedish premiere was originally planned for 18 April 2008, but following the positive response from the festival screenings, the producers decided to postpone the release until autumn, to allow for a longer theatrical run. At one time there was a plan to release the film for a special series of screenings in Luleå, beginning 24 September and lasting seven days. This was cancelled when the Swedish Film Institute announced that Everlasting Moments had been selected over Let the Right One In as Sweden's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The distributors released it on 24 October 2008 in Sweden, Norway, and as a limited release in the United States. In Australia, the film was released on 19 March 2009.The film was released in cinemas in the UK on 10 April 2009.

Home media
The film was released in North America on DVD and Blu-ray in March 2009 by Magnet Films, and in the UK in August by Momentum Pictures. The American discs feature both the original Swedish dialogue and an English dubbed version, while the European versions feature only the Swedish, and an audio-descriptive track in English. Icons of Fright reported that the American release had been criticized for using new, oversimplified English subtitles instead of the original theatrical subtitles^. This unattributed translation contained many mistakes and reductions, with many fans calling the release unwatchable. Following customer complaints, Magnet stated that they would release an updated version with the original theatrical subtitles, but will not exchange current discs. Director Tomas Alfredson also expressed his dissatisfaction with the DVD subtitles, calling it a "turkey translation". "If you look on the 'net, people are furious about how bad it is done", he added. The UK release retains the theatrical subtitles.

Reception
Swedish critics generally expressed positive reactions to the film. The average rating from 26 reviews listed at the Swedish-language review site Kritiker.se was 4.1 out of 5. Svenska Dagbladet gave the film a rating of 5 out of 6 and hailed Alfredson for his ability to "tell [stories] through pictures instead of words about a society where hearts are turned to icicles and everyone is left on their own, but also about love warm and red like blood on white melting snow".^[49] Göran Everdahl for SVT's Gomorron Sverige gave the film 4 out of 5 and described the film as "kitchen sink fantasy" that "gives the vampire story back something it has been missing for a long time: the ability to really frighten us". Expressen and Göteborgs-Posten were less impressed and gave the film 3 out of 5. Expressen criticized it for being unappealing to those uninitiated in vampire films while Göteborgs-Posten believed the supporting characters had lost the emotional depth that made the novel so successful.
Let the Right One In has received widespread acclaim by US critics. As of 19 August 2009 the film had a 98% "fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes based on 144 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2 out of 10, including a 96% "Cream of the Crop" rating from top critics, based on 26 reviews. Additionally, Metacritic has reported an average score of 82 out of 100 based on 30 reviews. Reviewers have commented on the beautiful cinematography and its quiet, restrained approach to the sometimes bloody and violent subject matter. KJ Doughton of Film Threat thought the visuals in the ending were fresh and inventive and would be talked about for years to come. Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, calling it a vampire movie that takes vampires seriously, drawing comparisons to Nosferatu and to Nosferatu the Vampyre. He described it as a story of "two lonely and desperate kids capable of performing dark deeds without apparent emotion", and praised the actors for "powerful" performances in "draining" roles. Ebert later called the film "The best modern vampire movie". One negative review came from Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly, who gave the movie a "C", characterizing it as a "Swedish head-scratcher", with "a few creepy images but very little holding them together".
Bloody Disgusting ranked the film first in their list of the 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade', with the article saying "It's rare enough for a horror film to be good; even rarer are those that function as genuine works of art. Let the Right One In is one of those films - an austerely beautiful creation that reveals itself slowly, like the best works of art do. The simplicity of the story allows Swedish director Tomas Alfredson to focus on these two pre-teen characters with a penetrating insight that not only makes it a great vampire film but a great coming-of-age film as well. At its core, the film is, simply, a human story, a pensive meditation on the transcendent possibilities of human connection. Most of all, it's a film that sticks with you, and whose stature will continue to grow in the decades to come."

Awards
Alfredson won the Göteborg International Film Festival's Nordic Film Prize as director of Let the Right One In on the grounds that he "succeeds to transform a vampire movie to a truly original, touching, amusing and heart-warming story about friendship and marginalisation". Let the Right One In was nominated in five categories for the Swedish Film Institute's 2008 Guldbagge Award, eventually winning for best directing, screenplay and cinematography as well as a Best Achievement-award to production designer Eva Norén. In awarding the film the "Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature", the top award at the Tribeca Film Festival, the jury described the film as a "mesmerizing exploration of loneliness and alienation through masterful reexamination of the vampire myth". The film also won the Méliès d'Argent (Silver Méliès) at the Swiss Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival (NIFFF) and went on to win the Méliès d'Or (Golden Méliès) for the "Best European Fantastic Feature Film", awarded by the European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation of which NIFFF is a part. Other awards include the first Rotten Tomatoes Critical Consensus Award at the Edinburgh Film Festival.
Despite being an internationally successful film, Let the Right One In was not submitted by Sweden for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The details surrounding the film's eligibility for the award resulted in some confusion. Being released on 24 October 2008, the film would normally be eligible for submission for the 82nd Academy Awards. However, the producers decided to release it on 24 September as a seven day limited run only in Luleå. This would be exactly enough to meet the criteria for the 81st Academy Awards instead.^[62] When the Swedish Film Institute on 16 September announced that Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments had been selected instead of Let the Right One In, the Luleå screenings were cancelled. Despite the fact that the film was released within the eligibility period for the 82nd Academy Awards, it wasn't among the films considered because the Swedish Film Institute doesn't allow a film to be considered twice

Remake
Before the release of Let the Right One In took place, Cloverfield director Matt Reeves had signed to write and direct an English language remake for Overture Films and Hammer Films. Hammer Films acquired the remake rights at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival and Overture films plans to release the film in 2010. Alfredson has expressed unhappiness about the remake, saying that "Remakes should be made of movies that aren't very good, that gives you the chance to fix whatever has gone wrong" and expressing concern that the end result would be too mainstream.Lindqvist, in contrast, is excited that Reeves will be adapting the book from scratch rather than merely copying the original film and that the end result could be quite different. According to Hammer Films producer Simon Oakes, the adaptation will stay relatively close to the original, except that it will be made "very accessible to a wider audience".
In an interview, Reeves expressed his intent to retain the original's early 1980s setting. He mentioned Littleton, Colorado, as a possible location for the remake, and revealed his own strong personal connection to the story: "It's a terrific movie and a fantastic book. I think it could be a really touching haunting and terrifying film. I'm really excited about what it could be."^[ The title of the film was changed to Let Me In, and the names of Oskar and Eli were respectively changed to Owen and Abby. In response to criticism of the remake, Reeves commented that: "I can understand because of people's love of the [original] film that there's this cynicism that I'll come in and trash it, when in fact I have nothing but respect for the film. I'm so drawn to it for personal and not mercenary reasons ... I hope people give us a chance." On October 1, 2009, it was confirmed that Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloë Moretz would be playing the respective roles of Owen and Abby. It was also announced that Richard Jenkins would play the role of the character known as Håkan in the original film. Principal photography began in New Mexico on November 2, 2009. On that same day, Hammer officially announced the additions of Elias Koteas, Cara Buono, and Sasha Barrese to the cast, in the respective roles of a policeman, Owen's mother, and Virginia.              THE ART OF WORLD CINEMA                 HOME