Creator: Andrew Hinderaker
Stars: Demián Bichir, Anika Noni Rose, Grace Gummer
Once again, the great cycle of culture has revolved around vampires. This year, television has seen a new season of FX's "What We Do in the Shadows," as well as the debut of AMC's "Interview With the Vampire," Peacock's "Vampire Academy" and Netflix's all of which were based on intellectual property. It follows, then, that the latest entry in the genre would be based on a story that was big during the last great vampire fad.
"Let the Right One In," a 2004 Swedish novel that was made into a Swedish film in 2008 just in time for the "Twilight" mania, followed by an American adaptation called "Let Me In" in 2010, now inspires a showtime series. Andrew Hinderaker is executive producer of "Away" and "Penny Dreadful." In its early days, the show is intriguing: its central story, the trembling and growing bond between a young vampire (Madison Taylor Baez) and her socially isolated partner (Ian Foreman), is sweetly drawn. But the show fails to illustrate the world around its characters. Although the children are at the heart of the show, their interactions tend to lack interest.
The setting is pleasingly straightforward: Eleanor de Báez is infected with a little-understood disease that her father avoids directly acknowledging; The consequences of it include a nocturnal lifestyle and an appetite exclusively for blood. Dad, well played by a sad-eyed Demián Bichir, feeds her her own blood when she must, but struggles to keep her sated and secret. A collision with a neighboring family, Foreman's Isaiah and his cop's mother, played by Anika Noni Rose, means that Eleanor is suddenly at risk of coming out into the open, something a vampire has good reason to fear. . From here, however, we gain little insight into the show's early days about how people turn into vampires, why the disease appears not to be particularly contagious, and what the repercussions of its spread might be for a New York that feels lifeless and two-dimensional. . No need to reveal the game at the top, but "Let the Right One In" seems thoughtfully vague about what its characters are going through, all the better for tackling themes of isolation and loneliness.
That they are well taken; Baez and Foreman are charming young artists, conveying the nascent feeling of potentially being understood for the first time. (Eleanor has no friends for obvious reasons; Isaiah is a somewhat socially awkward aspiring wizard.) But often when Mark de Bichir talks about his daughter's condition, I wonder how much of his vagueness is because the show wasn't over yet. he decided what he wanted vampirism to do or be.
At one point, in a separate and less successful plot involving an epidemiologist's attempt to help a family member with vampire disease, it seems like a metaphor for substance addiction; Grace Gummer's Claire continues to insist that the taste for blood is the disease she speaks of. Elsewhere, though, it just seems like a mechanism to isolate Eleanor enough for her first new friendship to be meaningful. That's lovely, but a show that also shows, say, the police character of Rose trying to figure out what's really going on in a city that seems to be plagued by nocturnal threats can't understand its own history until it has a clear idea of what's going on. what this kind of horror means, or how it would look practically.
There are things here that make one partial to "Let the Right One In," but unfortunately the show doesn't stand out in a crowded market of vampire dramas. It fails to connect its premise and the emotional labor that goes on with its horror elements; the sweetness of its story and the nightmare of what happens on the fringes feel like they are happening on completely different shows.
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