Let the Right One In

'Let the Right One In' is a Swedish vampire film that has nothing to do with horror, vampires or any other genre.
it transcends all movies in its content and how the director chose to deal with such a story
I heard of it a while back, when i saw the trailer of its American remake which is to be released next month.
And as they tell you 'do not judge a book by its movie', in our case here it should be 'do not judge a movie by its American remake', so I went and watched it because I knew i would kick myself if I ended up seeing the final American version.

The movie tells the story of a very odd 12 year old girl: Eli, she moves in next to Oskar who is of the same age, and they fall in love throughout the course of the movie. As you might expect, the plot takes the expected turns (Oskar is constantly bullied, Eli saves him. Strange murders happen in town and Oskar discovers its all Eli's doing. ).. that said, watching these events is a totally different experience, there are no scary scenes in the film, no sound effects whatsoever and there are no hot cheerleader running around with double D cleavage..

I had given up on vampire movies since I saw Bram Stocker's Dracula back in the 90's.. but when i heard of this film, the title itself (based on a Morissey song) made me extremely curious.
And indeed it did not disappoint me, the movie is very slow, there is absolutely nothing charismatic about the kids. But thats exactly what made me fall in love with it, Eli is bordering unattractive and Oskar looks like a classic Swede (so blonde that you can't tell his hair from his skin).

Tomas Alfredson the director, did an excellent job by being totally indifferent to the viewer's fast paced conditioned entertainment needs, he took his time with the story, and like most European film makers: this film gave us a character study instead of a complicated plot. The scenes took their time and weight, the dialogue was scarce and there were no complicated sets.

But what really got to me is the fact that this movie is not about vampires, it is about the kind of love a 12 year old experiences, the unconditional kind, the kind that is not cautious and eager to apply what it learned from previous experiences.

It is not visual by any means, you will not remember any scenes because they will all be clouded by two or three extremely powerful scenes, one of which shows Eli with blood all over her face as if it is chocolate sauce.

It is really a shame that we live in an age where kids define their future based upon twilight release dates, and have not heard of great vampire films such as Nosferatu .

One of the biggest misconceptions about vampire films is that they should either be terrifying and bloody, or Romantic and corny .
But every once in a while a movie like this comes along and gives us a completely different perspective on one of the greatest myths ever created.
Please stop obsessing with Twilight, I mean really Edward has the most vertically challenged hair i have ever seen, and Bella has two expressions, and she somehow ends up cross eyed in the rest. Vampires do NOT sparkle in sunlight and werewolves do not have piggy noses (what the hell are werewolves even doing in a VAMPIRE movie!)..