Raising any child presents a unique set of challenges. That’s especially true, it turns out, when that child is a vampire.
Showtime has apparently tripled its budget on fake (we hope) blood recently. Following the revival of Dexter and the smash first season of Yellowjackets comes Let the Right One In, a TV series inspired by the Swedish novel and film. In the new series, Mark (Oscar-nominee Demián Bichir) and his daughter Eleanor (Madison Taylor Baez) attempt to navigate life together under unusual circumstances: When she was 12 years old, she was turned into a vampire.
A parent’s duty is to keep a child alive. For Mark, that means one thing—there will be blood—and figuring out how to secure it.
The series premieres on-demand and streaming for Showtime subscribers on Oct. 7, before its on-air debut Oct. 9. The Daily Beast’s Obsessed is premiering its key art and its official trailer. In the trailer, you get a taste of what it takes for Eleanor to survive—and the moral compromises Mark is willing to make in order to help her.
There are hints of gruesome, bloody attacks. The complicated friendship between a curious child and the sheltered, carnivorous vampire that provided the heart of Let the Right One In’s 2008 film adaptation is previewed. And there is a preview of a tense investigation into the disturbing pattern of violence that is taking place so that Eleanor—and maybe others—can live. Maybe she’s not alone, and maybe she’s not controlling her impulses.
There’s an intensity to the typical dynamic of father-daughter petulance and exasperation. “Are you insane? Do you know how many people I’ve killed in order for you to live?” Bichir’s Mark screams. “I’m not even alive if I can’t do anything,” Baez’s Eleanor shouts back, as the trailer flashes images of blood circling a drain and creepy fingers climbing out of a trunk. The cacophony of eerie noises that escalate throughout the trailer comes to a silent climax as Bichir asks in darkness: “What was I supposed to do, let my child suffer?”
Let the Right One In should whet the appetite of fans who were equally horrified by and obsessed with Yellowjackets, the series about women dealing with the trauma of becoming possible cannibal cult members after their plane crashed decades before. It follows Showtime’s film-to-TV adaptation of American Gigolo, which is currently airing with Jon Bernthal in the iconic Richard Gere role.
To give a sense of how hallowed Let the Right One In is in the horror-enthusiast community, director John Carpenter, the man behind the Halloween franchise, recently singled out the 2008 film one of the best recent films in his wheelhouse. “I thought that was a movie that reinvents the vampire genre—it really does—and I admire it for that,” he said in a New Yorker interview over the summer.
In addition to Bichir and Baez, Let the Right One In will star Anika Noni Rose, Mamie Gummer, Kevin Carroll, and Nick Stahl.
Let the Right One In premieres Oct. 7 on-demand and streaming for Showtime subscribers, and Oct. 9 at 10 pm ET linearly on Showtime.
