In this paper I’m trying to explore the boundaries between
the vampire film (sub)genre by analysing the
films Cronos by Guillermo del Toro and Let the Right
One In by Tomas Alfredson. I think of these films as
very significant artistic achievements of the (sub)genre
pattern that create a hybrid, successful in terms of
communication, mixture of different genre patterns
(for example, combining the vampire saga and the
coming of age story in Let the Right One In) and up
to that point incompatible motifs, imagos and identities
– the pubescent vampirism of the girl (Let the
Right One In) as well as the “technological vampirism”
of the hybrid, multifunctional cronos device. These
innovative film combinations question or completely
abolish the boundary between what was in vampire
films considered to be ancient, essentialist, “naturalized’
legacy while the vampire character is further humanized.
At the same time, the determinist outlook in
terms of the inherited “blood curse” is perceived very
conditionally, as an artificial construct created while
overcoming and eliminating the conditional line that
divided “technology” and “nature”. Moreover, at the
metatextual level, these films tackle the dominant
‘grand narrative’, the inherited concerns related to
immortality, time and space, the demon / demonized
Other, friendship and the impossibility of a stable
unity between a “man” and a “vampire”.

Nikola Đoković