Swedish horror Let The Right One In competition and director interview

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Beautifully-crafted Swedish horror import Let The Right One In is set to wow audiences with its unique blend of genre chills with genuine feeling.

Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) is a 12-year-old outcast who is frequently picked on by his classmates.

He dreams of getting his revenge, but he never stands up to the boys. With the arrival of his new next-door neighbour, 12-year-old Eli (Lina Leandersson), Oskar may finally have found a friend, ally, and first love.

But Eli is no ordinary girl: she must keep her pale skin out of the sunlight, she can perform inhuman physical feats, and she has thirst for blood. The bodies begin to pile up, but Oskar can't stay away from the girl who has finally given him courage.

Let The Right One In opens at Picturehouse at FACT on Friday April 10th and to celebrate they've put some spine-tingling goodies up for grabs for Click Culture readers.

To win: a case of God Lager, three books of the film, a Little White Lies cover print and a pair of tickets to any film... e-mail newsdesk@clickliverpool.com with your answer to this question: Which Morrisey album features the song Let The Right One In?

Visit www.picturehouses.co.uk or phone 0871 704 2063 for info and booking.


We put director, Thomas Alfredson on our couch.

Click: Are you a horror buff?

TA: No. This is the first time I've made a film in this kind of genre, and to be honest I've never been so interested in things that are very fantastic or very unreal. But this book had an interesting mixture between the social-realistic style and the vampire stuff.

Click: How did you come across the book?

TA: It was a friend who gave it to me, and usually I hate it when people give me books or tell me to see films. So, yeah, this one was lying about for quite a few weeks on the table, but then I read it in 48 hours.

John Ajvide Lidqvist was in his late 30s when he wrote it, which is quite unusual, and he had been earning a living as a magician – literally, a street magician and a stand-up comic up until then. Which was a pretty strange career.

Click: What attracted you to the book, if you're not a genre fan?

TA: I had some rough times when I was a kid, when I was Oskar's age, so I had some strong feelings when I read it. It's also very interesting when you're at that age – if you are bullied you really don't know where to go with all your feelings, because a lot of anger grows inside of you, and this anger cannot come out, because you are too weak, or too shy. So I suppose, if you like, this vampire girl that Oskar meets could be the embodiment of his anger. And that was my way into the story.

Click: What kind of discussions did you have with John?

TA: He wanted to do the screenplay himself, and the book is something like 460 pages. So to turn that that into 110 minutes of film is quite bloody.

But it turned out to be a very good decision. He's a very good screenwriter. I don't know why, because this was his first book and this was his first screenplay.

The dialogue in this story is very quiet and it's also very poetic – it doesn't push a lot of information in your face. The film really works even if you don't listen to the dialogue, if you don't want to. John's a very visual writer, and a quiet writer, in that way, which makes him one in a hundred, because everything today is spoken.

Click: The title comes from a Morrissey song. Are you a fan?

TA: I'm a Morrissey fan as much as anyone else, but the writer is a big fan.

Click: Is the setting the same as the one in the book?

TA: Yes. This is a very special environment. After the last war, because Sweden was not in the war, we were the richest country in the world, so the Social-Democratic government really wanted to experiment with society.

One thing they did was to build a lot of suburbs around Stockholm, which are very distinctive in style and architecture. First they started building a subway system, all around Stockholm, and after they built that they built the suburbs around it, so it was very Swedish/German planning.

The intentions were good, but when people moved in it became something else. So in the beginning, in 1958/59, this housing project Blackeberg, where the book is set and where we shot, was ready, it was a very cute place, but in the late 70s, early 80s, when the film takes place, it was a nightmare.

But it was very beneficial for a filmmaker, because everything looks the same. It has the same colour palette. And you have a town in miniature, with this square in the middle and the houses all around it. You get a miniature landscape there.

Click: So it was a negative area?

TA: In those days, yes, over 20 years ago, there was a lot of drugs and social problems there. When I was young it was considered a dangerous place. The best way to see the difference between Sweden then and Sweden now is to look at old pictures of that town square.

There used to be a pharmacy, a liquor store, the social security office, a library and a Co-op. Today, there's a solarium, a tattooist and a video porn shop! Which paints a very revealing picture of what has happened to Sweden in those 20 years. Because, really, we were living halfway behind the Iron Curtain then.

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