let the right one in

I was recently invited to watch a movie with a friend from high school. It was last night, to be exact. I think that's pretty recent. Instead of some dumb cheerleader movie (Fired Up) we watched Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In, or as he referred to it: "Swedish Twilight." Indeed, the movie centered around a vampire "love story," though in a thoroughly different fashion. Eli, a "twelve" year-old vampire girl moves in next door to a nearly albino child named Oskar accompanied by her "friend" (a 47 year old man who sedates strangers, hangs them upside down from a tree or a lockerroom shelf, and drains their blood into a Tupperware container which, let's face it, probably came from Ikea).

Of course, as the common name would suggest, they have a puppy love romance. As vampire lore (and especially Twilight) goes, she warns him to stay away from her. He confesses he likes her after she climbs through his window and into bed with him (naked...those Swedes) and asks her to go steady. Earlier she asks if he would still like her if she weren't a girl. he says yes, which is good, because she's not. And not in the not-a-girl-but-a-creature-of-the-night type of way, but in the castrated-boy-bitten-by-vampire way. This nugget is displayed in a scene in which she changes into his mothers dress (hers is covered in blood of course) and he peeks through the door and sees a lack of "stuff" in the downstairs region. I did not understand this. I was pretty appalled at the movie at this point and was in shock that they even showed a downstairs region, so I had to read this online.

There are too many interesting/gory things about this movie to disclose in this post. If you're looking for a movie with lots of snow, bloody hermaphrodite kiss scenes, Swedish bullies, switchblades, alcoholism, acid-drenched faces, and Rubik's cubes, I highly recommend it. In fact, I recommend it for anyone not necessarily looking for any of those things. As horror movies go, I was sincerely creeped out by this movie. As I said after it finished, it was not pee-in-your-pants scary, but definitely made you nervous to go to sleep. Luckily, Eli is a fairly gentle vampire shemale, so I rarely felt threatened that she would pounce out of my closet at my slender neck, as I usually am.

On the box some newspaper or off-beat magazine claimed it was the "best. vampire movie. ever." Maybe not. But I would say "most. Swedish. vampire movie. ever" and that's from the heart.