Real Life with Ryuei

Letting the Right Movie In

Why do American horror movies all suck so bad! Americans, or perhaps I should say Hollywood, just does not know how to make horror movies. The Hollywood idea of a horror movies is to just be have lots of blood and gore and grotesque makeup and special effects and cats jumping around for cheap startle effects every 10 minutes or so.

And then there's this whole "vampire romance" thing going on with Twilight - a movie I have been doing my best to avoid. My daughter is interested in it simply because her friends at school are reading the book and so on and so forth. But she is barely aware of what it is about and I am sure would find it as or more boring than I would. Maybe I am not giving the whole Twilight thing a chance - but after Buffy & Angel I don't feel that Twilight could possibly be better than Joss Whedon's take on the genre. And considering the critics reviews and the fact that it is mostly teen or pre-teen girls who are into it, I just can't see myself sitting through it. I'' take Julie to see Tale of Despereaux and I have already taken her to see Madagascar II (and since I'm a Ben Stiller fan I rather like it), but as I said I am going to put off Twilight indefinately.

I guess I should also mention that despite listening to Nina Hagen and PJ Harvey and Siouxie & Banshees and other such great music over the years, Julie still prefers Hannah Montanna and hiphop music. Ah well. I will say this at least, I think Molly Cyrus is becoming a real artist for the kind of genre that she seems to be growing into. She seems to be a real professional and I think she is writing some of her own material. Not my thing, but I do have a real respect for her.

Anyway, back to vampire movies. On the way home from dinner with Yumi and Julie last night I noticed that the Swedish vampire movie "Let the Right One In" was playing at one of the local art theatres. I thought I had missed my chance to see it and was intrigued by the reviews which touted it as the antidote to "Twilight." This movie I wanted to see, so I headed out last night and caught it.

Wow. That is the way to make a horror movie. Actually, it wasn't so much a scarefest type of horror movie. More like, an exploration of a horrific situation and its grim and deeply disturbing implications. There were several gruesome images in it - but I never felt they were gratuitious. The tone of the film overall was macabre, somber, chilling and claustrophobic. There were some special effects (including a very cheesy looking cat-astrophe) but it was a low-budget film that relied more on setting up mood and advancing the plot rather than trying to overawe people with CGI to make you forget a lack of plot or character as in all too many Hollywood movies. I also really appreciated how points were made very subtly with a look or an image or a short remark. Unlike American films, this Swedish movies didn't assume that its audience would be composed of slack-jawed troglodytes and so didn't feel the compulsion to narrate or have the characters explicate ever little thing or overdue an image or a facial expression. And there were no explosions!

I think the only thing that would have made it better would have been a soundtrack by Portishead (esp their last CD) or PJ Harvey (a la "White Chalk" or "Is This Desire"). Perhaps that would have been overdoing it however, so maybe it is just as well that there was not such a soundtrack. As an aside, "White Chalk" and Porthishead's "3" (what an imaginative title for their 3rd recording - not) were my favorite CD's of 2008. Out of curiosity I did a google search on them and found out that indeed the term "sepulchral" had appeared in various reviews in connection to both CDs. Who actually uses that word anymore in any context? And how many times would it ever appear in a glowingly favorable review of a music CD? Granted, "glowingly" in this case would probably be the glow of a black light. Anyway, what are the odds of that word getting used in the reviews of two CDs by two different artists in the same year? Anyway, I just thought that was amusing.

Okay, now for the "Let the Right One In" spoilers...

The movie takes place in a very bleak and unadorned apartment complex in the middle of a dreary Scandanavian winter sometime in the mid-80s. Is this the Scandanvian equivalent of a proejct? Looks like it. It is about a painfully thin and incredibly pale bleach blonde 12 year old boy named Oskar who is obsessed with newsarticles about murder and mayhem and probably reads true crime novels. He is very meek and shy in addition to being creepy and so gets bullied at school and spends his time at home pretending (or practicing) to knife the bullies who are tormenting him. Then he meets his new neighbor - a somber 12 year old girl with pitch black hair named Eli. Between the landscape and the color tones of these two the movie could have been in black and white for all the difference it would have made - except that other people in the movie tended to have actual complexions and brown hair and clothes with a little bit of color to them. Anyway, this girl Eli lives in the apartment next door with her creepy dad? uncle? kidnapper? which is bare of furniture and whose windows are blocked by cardboard.

As things progress, we learn that Eli is a vampire and the man she lives with, Hakan, is her helper whose job is to go out and murder people to drain their blood to bring back to Eli. While Hakan goes about his gruesome business, Eli is coyly making friends with the lonely 12 year old budding psycho Oskar. And yet it is all done so delicately that a majority of the yahoo reviewers (who all gave it As) have commented upon what a touching and bittersweet love story it was. And yet - the implications of the movie are really horrific - but again done in such a way that I think some of these reviewers actually missed it.

So here let me touch on some scenes that really struck me as I was watching it and even more in retrospect (spoiler warnings for real this time):

There was an interlude in the movie where Oskar (whose parents are seperated or divorced) goes out into the countryside to be with his father. His father seems to be a very nice, handsome, and healthy man (both psychologically and physically) and the scenes of him with his father show that Oskar could potentially have a good and happy life, though a later scene where he is visiting his father shows this idyll of the perfect father-son relationship come screeching to a halt when another man comes to visit (his father's gay lover?) and suddently everyone gets very quiet and things become very awkward. This struck me because the movie was showing both an alternative happy life for Oskar that was within reach and yet just beyond reach - to better highlight the horrific implications of the way his life will actually go because of Eli.

At one point a woman is accidentally turned into a vampire and through this we get to see that it is no dark gift but rather a horrible curse. After only a single day and single night like this the woman chooses a flamey sunshiney death over continuing to exist in that way. These scenes were interesting because they not only moved forward the plot (insofar as blowing Eli's cover and bringing down the righteous wrath of at least one of her neighbors with all the murderous and bloody results of that confrontation) but also showed what is otherwise not said (how Eli got in that condition herself) and highlighted both Eli's anguish and pain but also her weakness (that she continues to cling to unlife as a serial killing unnatural parasite).

The most satisfying part of the movie in a disturbing and gruesome way is when the bullies corner Oskar in a pool all alone and threaten to stab him in the eye with a switchblade unless they let him hold him underwater for 3 minutes (in which case they'll only cut him up a bit instead of blinding him). Unfortunately for the bullies - Eli's still looking out for Oskar. The tension of this scene is almost unbearable (though I've just spoiled it all for you) and the rescue is both grotesque and understated as the violence occurs off camera (though not some of the results). It was a strange scene as it was suspenseful, awful, cathartic, stomach turning, grotesquely slapstick, and even strangely sweet and romantic all at once. I don't think any Hollywood director would have ever filmed a scene like that - and the way it was filmed was the only way it could possibly have worked I think.

The most disturbing scene in the whole move though (for me)happened in the middle. It was the scene where I really got what it was all about and what Eli had been doing, was doing and would be doing. It was very subtle, very brief. It was just a look and no words were said. Hakan is about to go out again with his tools to murder someone for Eli and they briefly look at each other and she reaches out and tenderly touches Hakan's grizzled aging face. In that moment I knew - Hakan had once been a lonely 12 year old boy and had also been seduced (after a fashion) by Eli and thus become her murderous caretaker. And now she needed a new one and Oskar was next in line. In that moment it became very clear that this romance between Oskar and Eli was not a touchingly sweet dark fairtale but a very macabre and horrific tragedy in the making. That one brief look between them that made everything clear sent a chill through me. What American movie would dare have the subtlety to have a scene like that without ruining it with overblown grimaces, sighs, and exposition?

Basically the movie boiled down to this: the seduction of an innocent but vulnerable young boy on the cusp of manhood by a creature who is either cynically manipulative or is so lonely and desperate to survive that she has passed beyond conscience and so does what she must to whomever she must. I don't think Twilight could possibly come close to this kind of movie - and probably it is grossly unfair of me to compare a Swedish psychological horror move with a Hollywood teenbopper popcorn flic.

Posted by Ryuei at December 29, 2008 10:42 AM