Let the Right One In

It's all well done, though lacking the nightmarish eeriness of the earlier treatments. [10 - 23 Oct 2022, p.5]

Read the book and see both movies first. Once you know the story and accept that this isn’t definitive, its complementary merits have some value, even if the show doesn’t offer the devastating variations on a fertile theme that I would have hoped for.

“Let the Right One In” features strong performances, particularly from Bichir and Rose, but it’s a slow burn and doesn’t have much new to say about the themes it embraces.

Let The Right One In just falls flat. As the series jumps between goofy romance, crime procedural, family drama, and horror, it loses all its narrative steam.

Thanks to a raft of solid performances and some promising possible paths forward, there’s reason to believe that things may yet grow more intense and bizarre. It’s hard to shake the nagging feeling, though, that Hinderaker’s small-screen remake is too defanged for its own good.

There’s stuff here that makes one root for “Let the Right One In,” but the show unfortunately does not stand out in a crowded marketplace for vamp dramas. It fails to connect its premise and the emotional work happening to its horror elements; the sweetness of its story and the nightmare of what’s occurring on the margins seem like they’re happening on different shows entirely.

It’s dull in ways that the book and films (and probably play) never were. Could it find some life again in the back half of the first season or in future ones? Possibly. The cast is definitely up for the challenge. If only the writers would give them something to sink their teeth into.