The View From Here - Uncut Blog
As the stage adaptation of ‘Let The Right One In’ prepares to open later this month on the West End we talk to Uncut Magazine’s film critic Michael Bonner about the original film version and the culture surrounding horror.
Describe Let The Right One In for those who have not seen it.
Winter, 1982. Blackeberg, a glum dormitory town on the outskirts of Stockholm. A withdrawn 12 year-old boy, Oskar, befriends a girl called Eli, who has recently moved into his apartment block. Eli, we learn, has been “12 for a very long time.” Then the killings start.
What separates Let The Right One In from other horror films?
There’s a lot more to it than the usual reductive genre tropes. Arguably, the best horror stories have their roots in European folk tales. By utilizing Sweden’s eerie, seemingly never-ending winter nights, Tomas Alfredson seems to be tapping directly into that tradition. His vampire, Eli, stuck forever in pre-pubescence, echoes folkloric stories of changelings, while one set of killings take place in a concrete underpass – surely, a modern iteration of the ‘troll bridge’. But these are possibly just my own high-falutin’ theories. Perhaps more pertinently, although the main events in the film could be described as supernatural, paradoxically they’re not treated as such. There’s no crucifixes, no wooden stakes, no garlic; indeed, shorn of traditional trappings of the horror movie, you could be forgiven for finding the events that unfold in this otherwise drab, unremarkable Swedish suburb almost credible. Alfredson's nods towards socio-realism – long, static shots of decaying housing projects; minimal score – further nudge the film away from the deliberate shocks and jolts of a conventional horror narrative.
You are spending Friday night in watching films, what other films would you line up to watch with LTROI?
>>Lilya Forever – similarly set in Sweden's run down housing projects and directed by Alfredson’s fellow countryman, Lukas Moodyson.
>>Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy – Alfredson’s follow-up to Let The Right One In, and another period film (this one's 1974) where the overriding colour palette is grey and the weather is largely gloomy.
>>Near Dark – my favourite ‘modern’ vampire film. Stylishly directed by Kathryn Bigelow, it’s a contemporary Western following a group of itinerant vampires drifting in a blacked-out Winnebago round the American mid-west.
What continues to appeal about Vampire fiction?
Superstitions about demonic blood-drinkers can be found in most cultures throughout history, so to some degree the notion of vampirism is hard-wired into our DNA. But, from the many iterations of Dracula down through Buffy to Being Human, I suppose the enduring appeal is tied into the story’s ability to adapt and modernize. I think the recent successes of things like Twilight or The Vampire Diaries is predicated around concepts that are broadly seductive to the typically alienated teenage audience: the mystique of sophisticated loners, tormented outside figures, transgression against the establishment.
What can staging the story offer that the film can’t?
It’s hard to answer that without having seen the stage version… but I guess the crew will have to find ways to replicate the things that were remarkable about the original film – especially the atmosphere the film evokes and the intimacy of Oskar and Eli’s relationship. But hopefully, the stage version will also have the opportunity to present the story in a unique way, as self-evidently a play isn’t beholden to the conventions of cinema – pacing, cuts. Jack Thorne, who’s obviously had success with Skins, presumably has good insight into the mind of teenage protagonists.
What songs would go on your ‘LTRIO’ playlist?
Aside from Morrissey’s “Let The Right One Slip In”, as the film’s set in 1982, I’d probably go for a selection of personal favourites from that year. So New Order’s “Temptation”, The Cure’s “Hanging Garden”, Psychedelic Furs’ “Love My Way”, The Replacements’ “Kids Don’t Follow”, Robert Wyatt’s “Shipbuilding”, REM’s “Gardening At Night”, Aztec Camera’s “Pillar To Post”, Rain Parade’s “What’s She Done To Your Mind”…
What stage adaptations of horror films would you like to see made?
>>Jack Clayton’s The Innocents – which has sort of been done, I think: or at least, there’s been other adaptations of Clayton's source material, The Turn Of The Screw
>>La Belle Et La Bête
>>Repulsion
>>The Others
>>Les Yeux Sans Visage or maybe The Skin I Live In
>>Les Diaboliques
Best film to stage adaptation?
Hmmm… are there any? At the risk of sounding pejorative, mainstream theatre has adopted a presumably lucrative but to my mind fairly reductive policy of developing stage productions based on a certain type of Eighties’ movie. Although it would probably be accurate to view my response as evidence of my own cultural snobbery, it's not for me. That said, I would probably enjoy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: The Musical, should it ever open.
Best stage to film adaptation?
>>Glengarry Glen Ross
>>The Odd Couple
>>A Streetcar Named Desire
>>Polanski’s Macbeth
>>Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?
>>Rope
>>Frost/Nixon
You’re throwing a dinner party and you only have room for one more guest. Out of these you need to Let The Right One In – who’s it going to be?
Werner Herzog, Mary Shelley, Morrissey, Danny Dyer or Lena Dunham?
Herzog.