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kamreadsandrecsSince Bram Stoker wrote a novel about a mysterious Romanian count named Dracula, vampires have been a favorite subject of both literature and film. The classic black-and-white movies Nosferatu and Dracula portrayed the vampire as a monster, but an alluring, seductive one, possessed of immense personal charisma. However, those movies never forgot the monster lying underneath all the charm, and were quick to remind the viewer that evil does not always look ugly, but in fact can come in the most fascinating packages. They were vile creatures who thought nothing of killing innocents and turning them into monsters too. They were an evil that needed to be purged from the world: an activity that vampire hunters like Abraham Van Helsing took on as their sole duty in life.
Anne Rice's vampires changed that slightly, adding a more human element that only increased their allure. In the movie Interview with the Vampire, based on Rice's novel of the same title, the vampire was no longer portrayed as a heartless monster. Rather, the vampire could be as human as any of us, and the monstrous immortality conferred upon them, initially so desirable, became an immense cross they had to bear for the entire stretch of their endless lives. Indeed, as in the case of the vampire Claudia, the weight of such a terrible gift could break the mind and the spirit and cause one to go completely mad.
And then along came a quartet of books called the Twilight Saga. All of a sudden vampires were not monsters: they were seductive creatures with sparkly skin and a penchant for corny one-liners and watching young women while they slept. Whatever monstrous nature the vampire had was eliminated entirely in these novels, and instead all the focus was put on the romantic potential of such characters. Although Meyer tried to keep them monstrous, she failed miserably. There was no way anyone could believe her vampires were threatening or dangerous. Her vampires are miles away from Rice's vision of the vampire, and are light-years away from the idea created by Stoker, his contemporaries, and his predecessors in folktale and legend. Meyer's vision of the vampire, which is also the way an entire generation views the vampire, is an emo, fluffy-brained idiot who can't make up his mind as to whether he ought to bite or not to bite. Because of Twilight, no one is willing to touch the vampire concept with a ten-foot pole.
But thankfully, there is hope. Swedish novelist John Ajvide Lindqvist wrote a novel titled Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in in Swedish), which went back to the roots of what a vampire was: monstrous, but seductive; dangerous, but irresistible. The novel was adapted into a movie with the same title, by Swedish director Tomas Alfredson, and premiered in 2008.
The story focuses on a young boy named Oskar, whose life isn't made any easier by the fact that he's constantly bullied at school. At home he fantasizes about stabbing the bullies who torment him, demanding that they squeal "like pigs" while he practices his stabbing technique on a tree in the courtyard of the apartment complex where he and his mother live, but in school he's unable to do anything at all.
All of that changes when a small family - a man and his daughter, so the viewer is made to suppose - moves in to the apartment next to his. He befriends the daughter, named Eli, and so starts a relationship that changes him forever.
Now, that really isn't anything new. Even Twilight started out that way. In fact, it's hard to miss the similarities between the two movies - similarities which might make viewers who are sick and tired of Twilight feel a little leery about even wanting to pick this movie up. Not to worry though: Let the Right One In isn't about some emo vampire having a relationship with an equally emo human. Sure, there is some romance involved in this story, but not in the same vein as Twilight.
First of the differences are the lead characters. Oskar, thank heavens, is no Bella Swann. He's about as normal and average as any young boy of divorced parents can be, albeit those fantasies he has about dealing with his bullies might seem a little less than normal to us. Then again, it's said that teenagers usually type like sociopaths, that's why you can't really know for sure if they're truly sociopathic until they're around eighteen or so. When he goes to visit his father for the weekend, that normalcy, that averageness, really comes out. In school he's always out of sorts, out of place; with his parents and, later on, Eli, he's altogether normal. In fact, in those moments it's quite easy to regard him fondly, even lovable, on occasion.
As for the vampire, Eli, she is most assuredly not like Edward. For one, her true gender is never really made clear. There are moments when she corrects Oskar and says she isn't a girl, which begs the question: when Eli says that, does it mean she is really a he, or that she isn't really human? There is actually a scene towards the last one-third of the movie when we see a very brief shot of Eli's mutilated genitals, which makes it even harder to confirm if Eli is really a girl, or if Eli was once a boy who was castrated. Either way, it's still possible to think of Eli as not being a girl because she isn't really human to begin with, or rather, she was once human, but now doesn't think of gender as much because it's part of a lifetime now long lost to her.
At any rate, as the movie proceeds, it becomes quite obvious to the viewer that Eli is of an older class of vampire, more akin to Dracula and the creatures in the old folktales than even to Anne Rice's vampires. Many of the instances that prove this are quite subtle in the early part of the movie, and easily missed by people who expect a vampire to flash fang and hiss like a cat. One of the first clues happens at the beginning of the movie: when Eli and her "father" move into the apartment, they cover the windows with sheets of cardboard and heavy curtains. Why do this? Obviously, vampires can't tolerate sunlight, and if a single beam of the stuff were to find its way into the apartment, then Eli would become crispy fried vampire. Another interesting thing is that the shape of Eli's pupils shifts too. Most of the time, they look normal, but sometimes, they take on a more slitted shape, like the eyes of a cat. Other times, her very face changes, looking somewhat more haggard and ruined when she is unable to cover up her vampiric nature.
Eventually, though, her true nature is exposed to the viewer in the first one-third of the movie, when out sheer hunger she goes out and makes a kill, which upsets her "father," who is actually the person who normally does the hunting for her by slitting victims' throats and filling a jug with their blood. After that, it's only a matter of time until Oskar - and everybody else - finds out about it.
I know I mentioned earlier that this movie was romantic, and it actually is: it's about teenagers awkwardly discovering new emotions and trying to figure out what they mean - and in a more natural, more realistic way than what Twilight portrays. Or at least, as natural and as realistic as it can possibly get, considering that one half of this couple is a vampire. Their romance is actually rather sweet, and I did feel a bit of a pang when Eli leaves after killing another man who tries to kill her in her own apartment, and was very pleased when Eli comes back to rescue Oskar from being drowned by his bullies - in fact, she rips almost all of them, except one, limb from limb, in a fantastically shot scene which showcases a head and then an arm dropping into the pool around Oskar, who's still submerged since he doesn't know that his avenging angel has come back to save him. For all that Eli is a vampire, it's kind of hard not to cheer for her and Oskar. It might be because of Oskar himself, who as a character is kind of hard not to love, as I said earlier, or it might just be because of the way Eli reacts to him.
And while there is sweetness in this romance, there is also something distinctly troubling about it. Eli is a monster, after all, and we're more than sure of this when we reach the end of the movie. Is it possible to be truly in love with the monster? Is it possible for the monster to truly love, at all? It makes one think of Eli's "father," whom by the end of the movie we're quite certain didn't start out as her father, originally. Likely, he was like Oskar once, lured in by Eli's allure to become some sort of servant - a beloved servant, to be sure, but a servant nonetheless. Like his predecessor, Oskar's fate is tied to Eli now, for good or for ill. He will forever be protected, will never have to suffer, but at what price does this come? The devil, they say, must be paid, and Oskar has indeed paid for his freedom from suffering - a great price, one which he does not comprehend.
The movie is shot in the middle of winter, and it's almost as if the film is forever stuck in that season. Never once do we get a glimpse or even a promise of spring, of warmth and heat and light. Even the daylight is cold and harsh, reflecting the coldness and harshness of the fluorescent lighting used in many of the nighttime indoor shots. Even the metaphorical warmth and good cheer of Christmas are absent, since there's not a single Christmas decoration in sight, ever. There isn't even a single shot of a fireplace or something similar, and the brief shot of a bonfire towards the end of the movie doesn't count; in fact I feel it's more a foreshadowing of Oskar "burning his bridges" to be with Eli than any symbol of warmth or the promise of warmth. At the end of the movie, with him and Eli (in a cardboard box)traveling by train to someplace else, someplace far, far away from Oskar's hometown, there is a feeling of happiness and joy, but the lighting and the weather imply otherwise. By his tying himself to Eli, Oskar has entered a perpetual winter, with no chance for the warmth of spring or summer.
Is this a horror movie? By all means, it is, and it's not about the gore or the "gulat" factor, as I like to call it. There is certainly gore, and there are some moments that can make a viewer jump out of his or her seat, but that's not what this movie is about. The true horror of this movie is about innocence that is lost, not because it is taken forcefully, but because it is given up willingly. It is the horror of knowing that a child has killed himself, not in the literal sense, but in the figurative sense, by dedicating himself to the service of a creature who, although she is capable of displaying human emotion, perhaps even feeling them, is really just going to leave him behind, just like she left her last lover behind. The horror is subtle, but all the more terrible for being subtle.
Anne Rice's vampires changed that slightly, adding a more human element that only increased their allure. In the movie Interview with the Vampire, based on Rice's novel of the same title, the vampire was no longer portrayed as a heartless monster. Rather, the vampire could be as human as any of us, and the monstrous immortality conferred upon them, initially so desirable, became an immense cross they had to bear for the entire stretch of their endless lives. Indeed, as in the case of the vampire Claudia, the weight of such a terrible gift could break the mind and the spirit and cause one to go completely mad.
And then along came a quartet of books called the Twilight Saga. All of a sudden vampires were not monsters: they were seductive creatures with sparkly skin and a penchant for corny one-liners and watching young women while they slept. Whatever monstrous nature the vampire had was eliminated entirely in these novels, and instead all the focus was put on the romantic potential of such characters. Although Meyer tried to keep them monstrous, she failed miserably. There was no way anyone could believe her vampires were threatening or dangerous. Her vampires are miles away from Rice's vision of the vampire, and are light-years away from the idea created by Stoker, his contemporaries, and his predecessors in folktale and legend. Meyer's vision of the vampire, which is also the way an entire generation views the vampire, is an emo, fluffy-brained idiot who can't make up his mind as to whether he ought to bite or not to bite. Because of Twilight, no one is willing to touch the vampire concept with a ten-foot pole.
But thankfully, there is hope. Swedish novelist John Ajvide Lindqvist wrote a novel titled Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in in Swedish), which went back to the roots of what a vampire was: monstrous, but seductive; dangerous, but irresistible. The novel was adapted into a movie with the same title, by Swedish director Tomas Alfredson, and premiered in 2008.
The story focuses on a young boy named Oskar, whose life isn't made any easier by the fact that he's constantly bullied at school. At home he fantasizes about stabbing the bullies who torment him, demanding that they squeal "like pigs" while he practices his stabbing technique on a tree in the courtyard of the apartment complex where he and his mother live, but in school he's unable to do anything at all.
All of that changes when a small family - a man and his daughter, so the viewer is made to suppose - moves in to the apartment next to his. He befriends the daughter, named Eli, and so starts a relationship that changes him forever.
Now, that really isn't anything new. Even Twilight started out that way. In fact, it's hard to miss the similarities between the two movies - similarities which might make viewers who are sick and tired of Twilight feel a little leery about even wanting to pick this movie up. Not to worry though: Let the Right One In isn't about some emo vampire having a relationship with an equally emo human. Sure, there is some romance involved in this story, but not in the same vein as Twilight.
First of the differences are the lead characters. Oskar, thank heavens, is no Bella Swann. He's about as normal and average as any young boy of divorced parents can be, albeit those fantasies he has about dealing with his bullies might seem a little less than normal to us. Then again, it's said that teenagers usually type like sociopaths, that's why you can't really know for sure if they're truly sociopathic until they're around eighteen or so. When he goes to visit his father for the weekend, that normalcy, that averageness, really comes out. In school he's always out of sorts, out of place; with his parents and, later on, Eli, he's altogether normal. In fact, in those moments it's quite easy to regard him fondly, even lovable, on occasion.
As for the vampire, Eli, she is most assuredly not like Edward. For one, her true gender is never really made clear. There are moments when she corrects Oskar and says she isn't a girl, which begs the question: when Eli says that, does it mean she is really a he, or that she isn't really human? There is actually a scene towards the last one-third of the movie when we see a very brief shot of Eli's mutilated genitals, which makes it even harder to confirm if Eli is really a girl, or if Eli was once a boy who was castrated. Either way, it's still possible to think of Eli as not being a girl because she isn't really human to begin with, or rather, she was once human, but now doesn't think of gender as much because it's part of a lifetime now long lost to her.
At any rate, as the movie proceeds, it becomes quite obvious to the viewer that Eli is of an older class of vampire, more akin to Dracula and the creatures in the old folktales than even to Anne Rice's vampires. Many of the instances that prove this are quite subtle in the early part of the movie, and easily missed by people who expect a vampire to flash fang and hiss like a cat. One of the first clues happens at the beginning of the movie: when Eli and her "father" move into the apartment, they cover the windows with sheets of cardboard and heavy curtains. Why do this? Obviously, vampires can't tolerate sunlight, and if a single beam of the stuff were to find its way into the apartment, then Eli would become crispy fried vampire. Another interesting thing is that the shape of Eli's pupils shifts too. Most of the time, they look normal, but sometimes, they take on a more slitted shape, like the eyes of a cat. Other times, her very face changes, looking somewhat more haggard and ruined when she is unable to cover up her vampiric nature.
Eventually, though, her true nature is exposed to the viewer in the first one-third of the movie, when out sheer hunger she goes out and makes a kill, which upsets her "father," who is actually the person who normally does the hunting for her by slitting victims' throats and filling a jug with their blood. After that, it's only a matter of time until Oskar - and everybody else - finds out about it.
I know I mentioned earlier that this movie was romantic, and it actually is: it's about teenagers awkwardly discovering new emotions and trying to figure out what they mean - and in a more natural, more realistic way than what Twilight portrays. Or at least, as natural and as realistic as it can possibly get, considering that one half of this couple is a vampire. Their romance is actually rather sweet, and I did feel a bit of a pang when Eli leaves after killing another man who tries to kill her in her own apartment, and was very pleased when Eli comes back to rescue Oskar from being drowned by his bullies - in fact, she rips almost all of them, except one, limb from limb, in a fantastically shot scene which showcases a head and then an arm dropping into the pool around Oskar, who's still submerged since he doesn't know that his avenging angel has come back to save him. For all that Eli is a vampire, it's kind of hard not to cheer for her and Oskar. It might be because of Oskar himself, who as a character is kind of hard not to love, as I said earlier, or it might just be because of the way Eli reacts to him.
And while there is sweetness in this romance, there is also something distinctly troubling about it. Eli is a monster, after all, and we're more than sure of this when we reach the end of the movie. Is it possible to be truly in love with the monster? Is it possible for the monster to truly love, at all? It makes one think of Eli's "father," whom by the end of the movie we're quite certain didn't start out as her father, originally. Likely, he was like Oskar once, lured in by Eli's allure to become some sort of servant - a beloved servant, to be sure, but a servant nonetheless. Like his predecessor, Oskar's fate is tied to Eli now, for good or for ill. He will forever be protected, will never have to suffer, but at what price does this come? The devil, they say, must be paid, and Oskar has indeed paid for his freedom from suffering - a great price, one which he does not comprehend.
The movie is shot in the middle of winter, and it's almost as if the film is forever stuck in that season. Never once do we get a glimpse or even a promise of spring, of warmth and heat and light. Even the daylight is cold and harsh, reflecting the coldness and harshness of the fluorescent lighting used in many of the nighttime indoor shots. Even the metaphorical warmth and good cheer of Christmas are absent, since there's not a single Christmas decoration in sight, ever. There isn't even a single shot of a fireplace or something similar, and the brief shot of a bonfire towards the end of the movie doesn't count; in fact I feel it's more a foreshadowing of Oskar "burning his bridges" to be with Eli than any symbol of warmth or the promise of warmth. At the end of the movie, with him and Eli (in a cardboard box)traveling by train to someplace else, someplace far, far away from Oskar's hometown, there is a feeling of happiness and joy, but the lighting and the weather imply otherwise. By his tying himself to Eli, Oskar has entered a perpetual winter, with no chance for the warmth of spring or summer.
Is this a horror movie? By all means, it is, and it's not about the gore or the "gulat" factor, as I like to call it. There is certainly gore, and there are some moments that can make a viewer jump out of his or her seat, but that's not what this movie is about. The true horror of this movie is about innocence that is lost, not because it is taken forcefully, but because it is given up willingly. It is the horror of knowing that a child has killed himself, not in the literal sense, but in the figurative sense, by dedicating himself to the service of a creature who, although she is capable of displaying human emotion, perhaps even feeling them, is really just going to leave him behind, just like she left her last lover behind. The horror is subtle, but all the more terrible for being subtle.
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-01 02:00 pm (UTC)They're obviously making Eli more girly in the American adaptation and even though it's going to have Cloe Moretz in it, I'm hesitant to watch it.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-01 02:11 pm (UTC)I'm not looking forward to the American version. There's some noise out there that says it's decent, but like you, I'm wary. The US has a bad tendency to screw up adaptations of foreign movies, especially horror movies.