Do vampires ever really go out of style? This fall Alan Ball via HBO is giving us True Blood, an excellent adaptation of a southern gothic book series that imagines vampires out of the closet. Now, right behind it comes the scandinavian gothic of Let the Right One In, also an adaptation, this time of a bestselling novel by a Swedish former stand-up comedian and magician, John Ajvide Linqvist. It is a stunningly beautiful and effective turn on the vampire tale. A story which is always about the irrestible and very sensual power this mythical almost human figure has awaken, inspire and control us.

It's 1982 and the light is low light during the long, cold Swedish winter. In a suburb of Stockholm, Oskar, a lonely, pale, white-blond boy, lives in a modest apartment in a charmless rectangular buildingwith his single mom. He is victimized by bullies, living in his own dream world. One day a 12 year old girl, dark hair to his light appears, barefoot and coatless walking in the snow towards him outside of his building. Her name is Eli and she lives with a man who may or may not be her father and who recovers the blood she needs to survive by murdering. Eventually, Eli is left on her own, which is when the two young neighbors friendship turns to a pre-adolescent and therefore sexually innocent romance. Then again, she is a vampire and once he is thrust into the role of protector the subtext is clear.

Director Tomas Alfredson, who hails from a family of filmmakers, read the book and immediately recognized his need to film it, recognizing a somewhat Dickensian combi-nation of cold and brutal social conditions and a redemptive romantic element. For Linqvist, the author of the novel who also wrote the screenplay, the story, "is about be-ing lifted out of darkness by love." Yet this is a very complex and delicate love story. It is recognizable but not predictable, with an ending that can be read in a variety of ways.

In a recent interview, Alfredson discussed how the film came to life

How did you achieve decide on such a stark yet beautiful look for the film?
When winter strikes hard in Sweden, it's like you push a pause button on everything. All is artificial: heat, light etc. After heavy snowfall there is also a very special kind of silence that comes. You here your own breath, even your eyelids moving. You may really ask yourself how do I survive in this crazy place. I was probably most influenced by the Renaissance painters which we studied alot, the photographer and myself before shooting. When it comes to lighting, to colors, also to character, the pale characters, and the very strange eye contact which Renaissance painting can have.

How did you manage the demands of shooting in winter in Sweden?

It's very tough to register cold on film. If it's just 2 degrees below freezing you won't see it. So you must come down to a very low temperature, which this is like -30 C. It's very, very cold. So the cameras were stopping, 2 of my fingers had frostbite. It was really tough but it's very beautiful and very crisp and has some strange kind of poetry to it. The light is so white, it's like knives or something, it's very strange working in those temperatures.
Also we did this the exteriors in the very north of Sweden in order to get the cold and to get the snow. We also got the darkness, you always seek the light, but you could also look for darkness. Up there in January you have 1 or 2 hours of lightness, so we got a lot of dark hours during a normal working day, so we could do night shootings during the working day.

How do you feel about winning Best Narrative at Tribeca FF as well as Woodstock FF?

I'm very happy and it seems like the American audience really understands this film and it's so strange because it nearly never happens to Swedish.

Why do you think vampire stories are so popular?

This kind of tale comes and goes with 20 years in between and I really cannot tell why. I guess they touch things in our personalities that have to do with the animals inside us that are very hard to comprehend. Maybe we have suppressed that part of ourselves and too much in our heads. Maybe it's reaction to that.

How closely did director and screenwriter collaborate on the adaptation of the novel?

The book is 360 pages with lots of subplots and it contains a very important thing where Håkan, the blood supplier is an outspoken pedophile. I couldn't handle that on the screen really. It would be too large and too complicated to bring to this story so we had to pick out one track to go with and that was the love story.

Are there other vampire films you used as influences?

I haven't seen any vampire films, I think, maybe when I was a kid on television, a Bela Lugosi film. I haven't been interested or drawn to the subject before now.

So you haven't read Bram Stoker's Dracula?

No.

Did you draw inspiration from anywhere else?

Renaissance painting like Raphael and Hans Holbein who has some creepy things, you should see them. Music also, I was listening to a lot of Mahler and Fauré. Fauré is very romantic music that inspired me to cling to the lighter side of the material.

How did you get find the book?

John the producer gave me the book. I hate having books thrown at me because I want to choose my own literature but he was very stubborn. This was 3 years ago and I fell in love with it. Generally, I don't think you should do films of good books because you have so much time and space to tell a story in a book whereas you have only 90 minutes in a film. So it's very seldom that you see a good book turned into a good movie.

How do you feel about remakes of good films?

I don't know. They are going to remake this one. Maybe they have found something in the book that we have not chosen to dramatize, I really don't know. I'm not a part of that process.

How did you come up with the unique and very quiet sound?

It's a very complicated sound process. Visually, I think it's very important to have a di-alogue with the audience because most of the entertainment today is monologues that come out of the screen. If you frame out things visually you always keep the audience active, making suggestions to them. If you choose to make it really dry with a lot of si-lence, the silence really brings forward the few things that you do hear and keeps you really active as a listener. For instance if you have this landscape, a city with cars and a lot of people and all you hear is a bird, your eyes will immediately start scanning the frame for the bird. But maybe in the maybe the bird does not come until the next scene in a cage. Then you have created an expectation in the spectator. I think today a lot of films are overloaded with too much sound and effects. That was my ambition with this one to highlight only a few things.
The character Eli is also dubbed because she had too high pitched of a voice. She is supposed to be androgynous, so I wanted to make her more boyish. So we had anoth-er girl with a lower pitch dubbing her.

What is Oskar's destiny? Is the story really about vampire manipulation?

I guess you can read it that way but it's up to the audience to decide. I, myself, have another ending in my mind. Let the Right One In opens in Los Angeles October 24, 2008

Directed by Tomas Alfredson; written by John Ajvide Lindqvist(from his own novel); Di-rector of Photography, Hoyte van Hoytema; edited by Dino Jonsäter and Tomas Alfred-son; music by Johan Söderqvist; produced by John Nordling and Carl Molinder. Re-leased by EFTI and Magnolia Pictures. Running time: 114 minutes.

With:Kåre Hedebrant (Oskar), Lina Leandersson (Eli), Per Ragnar (Håkan), Henrik Dahl (Erik), Karin Bergquist (Yvonne), Peter Carlberg (Lacke) Ika Nord (Virginia) and Mikael Rahm (Jocke).