Sweden isn't particularly known internationally for its horror films (Bergman's "Hour of the Wolf," notwithstanding), but then again, neither is Tomas Alfredson. Already well respected in his native country, the Swedish filmmaker ("Four Shades of Brown") is quickly becoming a name to know on these shores by both the Fangoria horror hounds and the Film Comment art snobs, all for a beautifully haunting youth romance with a splatter of blood on its hands.

On Genre films being dismissed as a lower grade of cinema
I really wouldn't know because I'm not a horror filmmaker at all. I'm mostly famous for doing comedy and stage work in Sweden, really -- I'm totally ignorant about horror films in the world. I just went into this work 100 percent, and tried to do it as sincerely as possible. Nowadays, I don't look upon films for professional purposes at all. I go to cinemas now and then as just an ordinary guy. I try to [look at] art or listen to music to inspire myself, but I didn't look at other horror films for this work.

On having some hard times at school and how the film might have been partly inspired by that time in his life
When I got this book three years ago, that was what hooked me to try to do this, because of my memories of those things. I suppose the strongest elements of fear are the fantasies of the scary things that could happen. When scary things do happen, you tend not to be so afraid -- it's the fantasy that's the scariest. Today, I'm not scared of anything other than something happening to my children. I'm not scared of creepy sounds, or going to the basement, or whatever. I have to go back to my own childhood, to my own memories. When I was very young, I experienced my older brother dying in front of my eyes, so I had a lot of creepy fantasies of that when I was older. That was a big source of stress.

On his children informing the characters in the film
I really try to keep my own children out of my work. It wouldn't be fair to them if I tried to use them. I'd rather use myself as a child, or question myself about my own childhood, rather than using my own children to get in contact with those feelings and memories.

On casting Lina Leandersson as Eli, overdubbing her "too feminine and soft" voice with someone else's. ?
That was kind of a late decision, and it was a big decision to make. There was a new casting [call], which lasted for one month -- you know, to find the right voice. Lina's voice is beautiful, but I thought it was too high in pitch because Eli is supposed to be a boy, a castrated boy. So I was looking for a more boyish sound to her voice. It was hard work to make that work, but I think it was the right decision.

On keeping the setting in an early '80s suburb
To me, it tends to be easier to sell such super-real actions in the past tense, for some reason. I don't know why, but it's easier to make it work. Also, this was a period when Sweden was, in many ways, another kind of society. It was much more silent than it is now, because of television and radio and sounds coming out everywhere. That was also a strong reason for doing it in the past tense. At the same time, I didn't want to do a nostalgic film, because that would be really cheap to just put on an old hit record, or a famous TV show, or relating to all those things. So it's very subtle, and it's not important for the story to come out.

On the state of Swedish cinema today and being part of an active film community
It's really struggling against illegal downloading, so we're having quite a tough time now in Sweden to survive that. The film economy has collapsed because of illegal downloading. Sweden is the most computerized country in the world, and everybody has a broadband connection and the latest, fastest computers. People steal what you do, and the business side doesn't work. It's very hard to keep it rolling. We produce about 20 features a year, but it's quite tough.

On not shooting any behind-the-scenes material for the eventual DVD
A good magician doesn't show how the rabbit disappears. If I were to decide it, I wouldn't want to go into detail how certain things are made in this film. I'm really happy with that decision.

On horror and the supernatural depicted with a sense of profound naturalism
There's hardly anything more incommodious imagining yourself making a cheesy horror film…I've been doing film and television for twenty years and this is the first time I've gotten into the horror business, and the true horror for me as a filmmaker was to create this supernatural story in this very naturalistic and everyday environment. For me, the key into this film was to omit as much as possible of the graphic details concerning the most fantastic details of vampirism, and in the opposite cases where we do show it, I wanted it to be as dull, dry and skimpy as possible.

On translating the novel to the big screen
The hardest part was to maintain the unsentimental ambience of the story and to make a trustworthy portrait of this very particular Swedish suburb in the beginning of the 1980's, without devoting to nostalgia. It's strange, the story could really be set anywhere at any time, but it meant a lot to me that it's set where and when it's written for. The specificness makes it universal.

On working with cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema
Hoyte is a true poet and I'm so grateful to have met this Dutch painter. It's really easy, specially in this kind of genre, to end up with endless technical discussions with the D.O.P., but with Hoyte, the conversation was also on a philosophical and humanistic level as well as on the visual aspects. We explored a lot of renaissance paintings trying to capture the delicate lightning. Before I die I will build a monument celebrating Hoyte in the harbor of his hometown Rotterdam, depicting him when he's out on a walk with his ridiculously small dog "Myggan" ("Mosquito").Hoyte's a true purist when it comes to analogue shooting and, though there are a lot of benefits with the digital stuff, I'm prepared to join his celluloid monastery. We are a few monks still left moaning the Kodak Gospel. This film would definitely not have the look it has if it was made digitally. My favorite, as well as the most challenging scene is the swimming pool scene in the end of the film. It took hundreds of hours with all people involved to make this single shot come true. It was really a tough effort and I love every frame of it.

On the editing process
The editing process started in storyboarding the film. I had a fantastic month together with storyboard artist Magnus Jonasson who was really inspiring and is a great source to the final feel of the film.
The editing process was in one way easygoing because of the rigorous preps and the plainness of the visual storytelling. I worked together with editor Dino Jonsäter experimenting with chronology and timing in a very interesting period. Once a week Louise Brattberg with whom I have worked together with for nearly twenty years, came in as the fifth and the sixth eye and told us what to do and not. I find editing like solving crosswords, it could really drive you mad sometimes - you know how many letters there ought to be, you know that the final letter is "F", you have it in the back of your mind day and night - and suddenly - when sitting at the dentist, you have the solution! You run out of the puzzled dentists' reception with this silly little napkin under your chin and sit down in front of the editing machine to try the idea out. It totally corrupts me twentyfour seven. Then, of course there are people involved watching the editing process that you have to convince and explain to and get nagged by. That's truly one of the hardest parts of moviemaking - in Sweden we have like ten directors that can accomplish a film of this level, and if you have a work-in-progress screening for some people who don't direct or know anything about the craft - suddenly turn into full-fledged film directors. They're yawning, complaining, suggesting scenes to be taken away that doesn't exist and so on - and these people have influence! I assume we have like ten brain surgeons, toppermost of the poppermost, in our country - would you dare to interfere with his or her work, suggest a little cut here or there? I don't know how that works in other countries, but here everyone's a film director.

On vampires its lore and history
I am a perfect idiot in these vampire matters. I have no history whatsoever of reading or seeing vampire stories. I've had total respect and confidence in Johns' knowledge of this. My impression has always been that the vampire bite has been a sexual act - the beauty turning herself over to the beast. In this story sex is totally left out, the urge of drinking blood is just a matter of nutrition. It's so beautiful with this love story between these teenagers without a moment itching hardons, incipient breasts or parents who wants to talk about pregnancy. Just plain tenderness and eternal love. That's really cool. No sex please, we're Swedish!

On the near indifferent and fractured relationship Oskar has with his father
At several screenings in the US, I've heard people say that the father's a homosexual! This for me came as a total surprise, but of course I found it interesting. I didn't want the grown-ups to be actively mean or evil-minded. I wanted them to be uninterested, floppy or ignorant, but always physically nearby the nasty events - if they'd just turned their heads a little, if they'd just listened a little more accurate, if they'd just asked one more time.

Cinema tales of outcast cinema seem to always perfectly weave a sense of reality and fantasy in their tales. Films like René Clément's Forbidden Games or Night of the Hunter, sprung to my mind while watching Let the Right One in. Both create captivating onscreen realities that feature remarkable performances by their child actors, while dealing with dark and sometimes adult themes. The little moments they create, especially in the moments where revelations are made are quite impressive! So much of their roles are in not what they say but how their physical body language, which they do an exceptional job in being able to be transcending beyond just where they have dialogue. I imagine the non-dialogue scenes for child actors can be even tougher to pull off.
The screenplay is really a piece of silent movie, I find most of the dialogue as a poetic layer of the entirety. Both Kåre and Lina who plays the leading parts are extremely intelligent, have exceptional integrity and are both kinds of strange old people. You meet kids some times that have eyes of an eighty-year old man or woman and seem like some sort of reincarnation. It took us a year to find them, and I think they're unprecedentedly fantastic. I've worked a lot with kids and for me it's all about the right casting and then, in a short amount of time, establish some sort of mutual confidence. Never lie to a kid, never hoax them into things, tell them when they're bad and don't forget to play and have fun from time to time (in brief - the stuff you don't do with grown up actors).

On Eva Noren's work in helping to fully realize the characters
It's really hard to stage emptiness - as well as it's hard to stage silence. To stage silence the classical way is to have some sort of very subtle sound to put in contrast with silence: gentle rain on the window, dripping from the bathtub. It's the same with emptiness - you have to find the right components to contrast the emptiness, and I think Eva's made a tremendous job with Eli's empty apartment. It was also a tough task to solve the lightning in Eli's apartment. I didn't want it to be Dracula-dark, it would have been to simple, and I didn't want lightning coming from lamps, so we invented "spray-light" - imagine you could capture boring grey daylight into a can and then spray it out just before shooting!

In particular the world and actions of vampires in your film are void of hyper editing, hyper cutting and over the top CGI, which dominates so many horror films and vampire tales of late. The realism of action in Let the Right One In is macabre without being stylistically excessive and never feels artificial. There is also a very vibrant energy when action and horror does happen.
The film is really complicated and it's really stuffed with CGI (for Swedish standards), though nobody seems to notice, and that's really a conquest! Nothing bores me more than sitting on endless meetings about technical solutions without talking about what they're communicating. Special Effect Land is really the men's world (and I don't know why) and everybody suddenly turns twelve years old when talking about these things. I guess I tried to work with these matters as a grown-up and with the other side of the brain. It's quite fun to talk to a CGI-person in terms like, "I want this room to smell like rotten eggs."

Let the Right One In is a great example of a multi-dimensional film, basic viewers can follow along, as well as those looking for drama or those looking at it more towards a horror fan point of view. The transformative and transcending experience of the film can equally be felt by the audience that isn't fully digressed into it and the audience that is fully immersed and on the edge of their seat throughout its running time. What are your thoughts on this tale not fitting into any simplistic categorization or genre? Everyone seems to be in a rush to pin the down as this or that. At the heart of Let the Right One In, it does sway towards the classical tale of boy meets girl and the obstacles they must go through in overcoming their inner demons to achieve their goals, but rarely have we seen so many disparate genres fused like this in perfect harmony.
I do think that categorization of films is not for directors to make, genre is a word for marketing people. I aim to complicate subsistence as much as possible; I think it's my task as an artist. Categorizing is for people who want the opposite.

Now with Per Ragnar as Hakan who turns in a great performance, especially in his more solemn scenes. There seems to be some intent to leave his motivations and back-story ambiguous? In the novel there is much more explained on who his character is.
In the novel "Håkan" is a pronounced pedophile. I think that child molesting is used carelessly in television and film. It's too complicated a matter to just use as an emotional special effect. The film suggests that "Håkan" is an old aged lover to Eli. Maybe Oskar is becoming the same in the future?

On influences
I would say listening to music. Music gives me shivers like no other art form and make the strongest images.

On filmmakers had the biggest impact on you?
My father's a filmmaker and I grew up on different movie sets since I was a baby. Watching him and his colleagues work was my university. I have a bunch of favorite films but I really don't like telling people which they are - I feel naked if I do.

What are you working on next? Any details you can share? What are other types of films you would love to make someday?
Next week we start the rehearsals of "My Fair Lady" on stage in Stockholm. I would like to do films I didn't know I could do, like "Let The Right One In."

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