Vampiress TV Review: "Let the Right One In"

Let The Right One In is a television series which debuted in 2022 on the Showtime Network.  It is named after and loosely based on the Swedish Novel turned film of the same name which you can read my review HERE. 

While at first glance you start to feel like it is just an urban remake of the film because they do recycle some of the early imagery from the film when it comes to the vampire Eleanor (Madison Taylor Baez) meeting her eventually love interest Isaiah...

you eventually find that Eleanor the vampire in the TV series is the complete opposite of Eli the vampire in the film in nearly every way such as.  

- Eli is a much older vampire who you find out in the films twist has romances with young kids to eventually groom them into being her caretaker once they become adults.  Eleanor at worst should be in her late teens/early 20's but stopped aging due to her vampirism and her caretaker is her actual father.    

- Eli is perfectly fine with having to feed to live.  Eleanor up to the point that the TV show begins has never killed anyone and gets her blood from her father murdering people and bringing it to her.

- Eli uses relationships as a means of convenience knowing her targets are easily manipulated due to their age.  Eleanor actually has true feelings for Isaiah and it depresses her that one day he'll get older and she'll still be a kid.  

Probably the biggest difference between the two versions is that Eleanor actually does have fangs which is kind of backword seeing as Eli from the movie actively feeds on people but doesn't have them and Eleanor does have fangs yet drinks from jugs. Her fangs only come out four times in the shows first season which is how we know she has them. 

The day they find out she's a vampire in a flashback she tries to feed on her mother.  

The day she first meets Isaiah she stops herself from feeding on him (below) 

and when she gets her first kill by attacking the men who kidnap her father which is the first time and only time she kills. 

Because Eleanor is a victim in the show and not the villain, they need new villains, so the antagonists are a family of medical researchers that plan on using her as a guinea pig to try to find a cure for their brother/son who also was turned into a vampire who have no problem with killing her to do it.  

The finale of the first season left off with it looking like Eleanor won't be the only female vampire on the show.  One of the side storylines is the budding relationship between Eleanors father and Isaiah's mother. 

Isaiah's mom is divorced and Eleanors mother died in order to feed her so that left both leftover parents very lonely with their kids wishing they had lives.  Eventually after a short relationship of sorts Isaiah's mom (who is a homicide detective) finds out that Eleanors dad killed her ex-husband/Isaiah's dad when she investigates him after she ghosts her (He did not know them at the time and thought he was a drug dealer working for the researchers).  She ends up following him to the researchers lab and ends up in the middle of fight between him and the researchers family as they were torturing Eleanor and gets gravely injured.  The last scene of the season is her dying on the ground telling them to tell Isaiah that she's sorry. Eleanor tells her she won't let Isaiah lose another parent before biting her.

If there is a season 2 the dynamic of Isaiah having a vampire mom is going to be interesting especially since in this shows lure vampires do not have control unless they feed within a certain time period and must drain their victims completely for the thirst to temporarily go away.  Does this mean Eleanor and her father may have to protect Isaiah from his own mother to prevent her from doing to him what Eleanor did to her mother?  

UPDATE: It was announced in early 2023 that Showtime would be making budget cuts heading into its complete merger with the Paramount + app.  Included in that budget cut was the cancellation of several shows including Let the Right One In.  

Vampiress TV Review: Silk Stalkings

"I Love the Nightlife"

Season 6

Episode: 20

Silk Stalkings was a night time crime drama which aired on the USA Network in the 90's.  The selling point of the series was that the crimes on each episode usually happened just before or after a half naked woman was going to have sex with someone. 

In this episode a guy who thought he was a vampire would go to a goth bar and pick of random women.  He would drug them then take him back to his place and during sex two women would show up and they would kill the woman and drain them of blood.  The guy and one of the girls named Lilith sported fangs when they did their kills. 

As the episode went on it became clear that the non fanged one Tara was Liliths side piece.  She never actually sported fangs and it was her that lead to the trio's eventually capture. 

The episode ends with Lilith turning on the male vampire and giving the detectives a crossbow loaded with a wooden stake which finally took him down after guns didn't work.  They then find he was wearing fake fangs and a bullet proof vest.  They then capture Lilith and take her to jail but the last thing we see is that she bit and drained her cell mate. 

Before heading back to the goth club fanging out one last time before the credits roll implying that she was the real vampire the whole time.

 

It was an ok episode only bogged down by the secondary storyline of the female detectives love life where she's in a complicated relationship with a guy going through a divorce from a woman who is mentally unstable. 

Vampiress TV Review: Glory Days

Lost Girls

Season 1

Episode 5

Glory Days was a short lived night time supernatural drama that aired on the WB Network in late 2002/early 2003.  The premise is basically a cop and a writer living in a small town where weird things happen every week resulting in cases they have to solve. 

In this episode three vampire women show up in the town of glory around the same time a womans body is found drained of all her blood. 

The first of the vampires we meet is Rosalyn who seems to have a thing for Sherriff Rudy as she shows up wherever he does determined to get him to be with her. 

Then you have Jade who is the ring leader of the group who does most of the talking.  Her eyes are specifically on young Zane.  She is played by the legendary Canadian vampire actress Meghan Ory (Supernatural, Vampire High, Sanctuary)

And finally, you have Sharla who is just a background character who says nothing but makes really good fang out faces in the scenes where the other two do.

We eventually find out they are not vampires but college girls doing a sociology experiment where they see how people react to being attacked by a vampire and have nothing to do with the murder in the town.  

It's lazy writing as clearly they just needed an excuse to have hot vampire women on a show on the WB without outright biting off of Buffy or Angel and this was the best they could do.  Thankfully the network would do a bit better over the years for the vampire genre after the WB/UPN merger into the CW in 2006.  Outside the horrible reveal this was a decent episode.