Conor McMahon’s LET THE WRONG ONE IN delivers a distinctly Dublin dance with draculas from Screamfest 2021

Conor McMahon’s LET THE WRONG ONE IN delivers a distinctly Dublin dance with draculas

Ireland has a long and acclaimed history of storytelling and folklore, one the older generations will frequently, happily tap into over a pint or several.

Less happily, Irish youth culture has an equally long tradition of machismo, bullying, and mockery of flights of fancy as soft or stupid. Trust me; I grew up there. Part of the stereotype of Irish drinking is of socialization, to be sure, but the darker side is those who turn to intoxicants because of constant belittling and the resulting depression.

Conor McMahon’s vampire comedy Let the Wrong One In isn’t, perhaps, the most nuanced take on these issues, but its broader comedy depends upon a grounding in them.

Though the title references the popular Swedish novel that spawned a movie, an American remake, and an upcoming TV series, the two stories have little in common save the fact that both are about vampires, which is all it needed to convey. Where the Swedish tale featured an eternally pre-teen trans girl (the trans part having been effectively straightwashed in the adaptations) with a childlike personality, this Irish version focuses on a twenty-ish male drug addict and screw-up who’s quite literally too stupid to live. So being undead is arguably the best thing for him, if not for any of the loved ones dragged into his circle of self-sabotage.

Vampirism as drug addiction metaphor isn’t new – there’s literally a movie called The Addiction all about it. But normally such metaphors empathize with the addict. Let the Wrong One In, as its judgmental title suggests, is using vampirism as a metaphor for why people should cut out the addicts in their lives. Mostly. Certainly, its sympathies rarely lie with addict/vampire Deco (Eoin Duffy), and more with his younger brother Matt (Karl Rice), who lives at home with his mother and would prefer Deco not sell any more of his things to pay for drugs.

The main vampire in the situation, a bridezilla-to-be who gets bitten at a bachelorette party in Transylvania, could be seen as a metaphor for people who won’t allow such things as an international plague to put the slightest cramp in their style. Or, more simply, just the general obliviousness of youth. At any rate, she sees the young adult population of Dublin and its love of nightclubs as a particularly fertile feeding ground, and Deco is just one of the early victims along the way. But the queen succubus’ betrothed happens to be played by Anthony Head…for exactly the reasons you’d suspect. His skills may be slower in this story, but the man is still a mentor for vampire slayers.

One has to wonder how this will play in Ireland, when so much of what gives the film its distinct flavor involves the accents and personalities that will likely seem more normal and less quirky there. My sense is that, much like Southerners laughing at Ernest movies, the Irish have a healthy sense of humor about themselves when it comes from their own. Indeed, Irish-Americans a few generations distant may be more likely to take performative offense. And everyone likes to hear their own slang represented onscreen. (I will never forget watching The Silence of the Lambs in a Dublin theater, seeing the “VA” abbreviation for Virginia come up in a title onscreen, and hearing a local in the audience loudly proclaim “Vah? Hwhot dafook’s VAH?”)

When it comes time for some of the more fantastical elements to unleash, they do look a touch ridiculous, in part because the budget isn’t there for something more elaborate. But there’s something that culturally works about the cartoonish exploding skeletons and bat hybrids. When facing an aggressive youth mentality that mocks imagination anyway, forcing its practitioners to reckon with a particularly ludicrous looking threat is like additional ironic punishment. Not to mention the kind of yarn an older storyteller might spin to delight young children.

Deco may be the wrong one of the title, but the movie ultimately suggests that even the “wrong” among us can be worth preserving, if they at least mean well. It’s an unlikely cry for tolerance in a movie full of blood-puking, but one that may well hit a target crowd unmoved by more overt gestures.

Conor McMahon’s LET THE WRONG ONE IN delivers a distinctly Dublin dance with draculas from Screamfest 2021