Let The Right One In: Who would you kill to save your children?

Parents will understand this: there is almost nothing you won’t do to protect your children. I say “almost” because we tend to have limits and boundaries. But in the case of Mark (Oscar nominee Demián Bichir), the father in Let The Right One In, there is literally no limit to what he’ll do to save his daughter – and this includes committing multiple murders.

His daughter, Eleanor Kane (Madison Taylor Baez), is 12 years old, and has been for a decade. That’s how long she has been a vampire, mysteriously “infected” one starry night. She and her father have been on the run for a long time, hunting for a cure. At the same time, Mark does whatever it takes to keep Eleanor alive, and let’s put it out there: this means providing her with fresh human blood on a regular basis. To do this, he must kill so she doesn’t have to.

Returning to New York City where they lived when Eli’s mother was still alive, Mark and Eli move into an apartment next door to Naomi Cole (Anika Noni Rose) and her son Isaiah (Ian Foreman). He’s a bit of a nerd, into magic (illusions and such), and bullied at school. Also an outcast, not being able to go out in the daylight, Eleanor befriends Isiah. It gets rather complicated with Naomi being a homicide detective, and Mark being a murderer (not to put too fine a point on it), so there’s always the tension of everything being brought out into the open. Even more so when Mark and Naomi begin having romantic feelings for each other.

In the mix too is Zeke (Kevin Carroll, The Leftovers), Mark’s best friend and Eleanor’s godfather, serving as a moral compass.

Then over on the other side of the plot we have Peter Logan (Jacob Buster), a teen a bit older than Eli, who is suffering the same affliction. His situation involves a father (Arthur Logan played by Željko Ivanek, Madam Secretary and many other series) who once upon a time created a pharmaceutical that ruined lives because of its properties that could be abused.

No candidate for dad of the year, when he’s on his deathbed, he recruits his daughter Claire (Grace Gummer, Mr Robot) to continue his research into finding a cure for Peter (whom she thought was dead all these years, mauled by a bear as the story goes).

These are the players on the board for the darn good drama series that just happens to revolve around a vampire or two, with an underground drug trade on the side. Something’s got to fund that fancy lab at the Logan mansion. It “explores the shades of gray between good and evil, as well as the loneliness that can afflict unusual children and career-minded adults. Better still, it’s an elegant production, which cleverly juxtaposes the intimacy of its personal relationships with particularly vicious, visceral vampire attacks,” said IndieWire.

The creepiest moments in Let The Right One In

Obviously, being a vampire series, there have to be plenty of creepy and/or scary moments. Here are some of them.

1. Tunnel o’ rats

Opening with a vampire bursting into flames and ending with Sweet Child O’ Mine by Guns and Roses over the closing credits, the first episode includes some very creepy dark tunnel footage and swarms of rats when Mark follows someone down there, convinced he’ll find someone who has similar characteristics as Eleanor. There is more tunnel action later in the series, with Naomi and her partner Ben (Jimmie Saito) where they discover brutally mutilated bodies.

2. CGI chimps

The monkey, oh sweet lord save us, the monkeys. Chimpanzees actually, and thankfully very clearly CGI. But they are spine-chilling as heck. They’re in cages in the Logan lab, and are used for experiments. The CGI gives them even more human characteristics than normally acceptable and that is just plain freaky. As for what Claire does to them…

3. Callous Claire

On that note, the lengths she will go to to find a cure for her brother are extreme. We already know Mark hunts and kills for his daughter; Claire turns out to be just as – if not more – brutal and callous. She starts off as a nice, clever doctor but becomes quite the monster herself, crossing lines even she probably never imagined, with terrifying calmness and a singular goal. There’s a part where she’s about to perform brain surgery – and that in itself is alarming, the way the skin is cut and peeled back, the skull cut and lifted off like a lid – and Peter asks her “where did you learn how to do this?” and you fully expect her to say “YouTube”.

4. The backstory

Episode 7 is a standalone flashback episode that provides the back story to Eleanor’s infection. It’s quite gruesome as her parents figure out what is wrong with her, and we learn how her mother died.

Inspired by the novel of the same name by Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist – which spawned Tomas Alfredson’s 2008 feature involving a young boy whose new friend is a vampire, as well as 2010’s American remake directed by Matt Reeves, Let Me In – showrunner Andrew Hinderaker and his team “thoughtfully elaborate on the human aspect of this story about families and vampires, letting its creepy elements round it off as a piece of meaty dramatic horror,” said RogerEbert.com.