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It’s not easy to do horror-comedy. Most fall into the trap of being comedy-forward instead of dealing with anything that genuinely approaches horror. There are some solid exceptions, of course. Shaun of the Dead is the template for solid horror-comedy as it should be done. It’s actually funny and there are some genuine horror elements in it. Let the Wrong One In, clearly meant to reference Let the Right One In, attempts to do for vampires when Shaun did for zombies.
Average Dubliner Matt (Karl Rice) deals with his mother (Hilda Fay) and his drunken, junkie brother Deco (Eoin Duffy) as best he can. What he doesn’t know is that Deco was recently attacked by a vampire named Sheila (Mary Murray), who was turned at her bachelorette party near Transylvania. Deco is persona non grata at home, but, guilted into helping him, Matt invites him into the house to keep him safe from the sunlight. Wanting to help, he calls for a doctor, but instead gets Henry (Anthony Head), Sheila’s fiancé, who has sworn vengeance against all of the vampires in Ireland, all of which are being created by Sheila and her bridal party.
While there are some additional details, this really is most of the plot. Matt has to decide if he’s going to protect his now-undead brother or if he’s going to follow in Henry’s footsteps and become a vampire hunter. More importantly, Matt learns that the vampires are opening a new club, offering ridiculously cheap drinks to bring in customers, and planning on turning them all into vampires so that they can take over the city. And, when Matt’s mother becomes the prize in the raffle (she has AB- blood), Matt needs to convince Deco to help save her, despite Deco’s recently-turned girlfriend (Lisa Haskins) trying to convince him not to.
There’s a lot that Let the Wrong One In does well. The first thing is that it doesn’t skimp on the blood. Not all of the effects are great, and some seem deliberately cheesy, but there’s an Evil Dead II level of arterial spray throughout this. And while there’s not a lot here that is genuinely scary, there is a lot that hearkens back to genuine horror films. This is very much a comedy, but it’s at least one that respects its horror roots.
Lack of budget can often be a real benefit in making a film. This was made essentially with a cast of unknowns, outside of Anthony Head, who does feel a bit out of place in this. But it’s also something that really works to the benefit of the film. Everyone in this looks real. We’re not getting glamorous Interview with the Vampire or sparkly Twilight vampires. These all look like real people, albeit with fangs.
That said, this could really have stood a little bit larger of a budget for some of the effects. Watching vampires in this be exposed to sunlight works until that exposure becomes something that kills them, and it looks pretty cheap. The same is true the few times someone turns into a bat, but in these cases, it actually feels intentionally cheap and a bit silly.
I went into this wanting to like it, and I did enjoy watching it. It’s not a great film, but it is at least an entertaining one. The characters play as real, even if they are often a bit silly and have extreme personality quirks the way that sitcom characters and many comedy movie characters do. There are some solid unexpected moments that, while not scary, at least are very much a part of the horror genre rather than the comedy genre. And I think that they did what they could with what they had to work with.
So, Let the Wrong One In is not something that I would consider necessary viewing, and probably not a film that I will feel the need to see a second time. But I respect that it really wanted to do something in this genre, and that it didn’t always take the easy way out and go exclusively for cheap laughs. There are cheap laughs, of course—there’s more than one fart joke, if nothing else—but the effort is clearly here to add to the roll of horror comedies.
Why to watch Let the Wrong One In: A horror comedy that really tries to be more than just a comedy.
Why not to watch: Cheap effects ruin a few parts.