The figure of the vampire is a peculiarly transnational phenomenon as it moves, sometimes with supernatural speed, between different countries, parts of the world, and media. One intriguing recent example is the English translation and film adaptations of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Swedish bestselling novel Låt den rätte komma in [Let the Right One In] (2004). It was translated into English in 2007, and Thomas Alfredson directed a Swedish film based on the novel – with the screenplay written by Lindqvist – that was first screened in 2008. This film reached an international audience to great acclaim. In 2010, Matt Reeves’s American remake of the film was released under the title Let Me In. Reeves’s film is set in Los Alamos in a 1980s US instead of in Swedish Blackeberg, a Stockholm suburb, in the same period. In this paper, I want to examine how the cultural setting is translated from the Swedish context to the American one and compare how the 1980s is represented in the Swedish and the American films. Moreover, I will argue that there are some significant changes, particularly regarding gender and sex, in the central figure of the vampire as it is adapted from novel to film, and from Swedish film to American film. I will relate both the cultural representation of the setting and the changes in the figure of the vampire to the “encounter with the other,” to the familiar and the unfamiliar. To what extent does the American film adaptation retain uncanny and horror elements that can be found in the Swedish adaptation and/or the novel? What could be the reasons for omissions and changes?