The Vampire Double Feature: Let The Right One In and Twilight

Ah, Vampires. I’ve always liked the undead, blood-sucking little bastards. Wow, Microsoft Word doesn’t recognise the word undead. That’s unexpected. Anyway, blood drinking monsters have existed for as long as civilisation but the suave, pale seducer that we know as the vampire today has only really been around since the 19th Century and is most famously portrayed in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula.
In this day and age, Vampires are not just some of the most popular movie monsters but also some of the silver screens most popular sympathetic characters. They symbolise the gift and curse of immortality, the inherent loneliness of living forever, the harsh truth behind the fantasy. They also represent a dark side to our sexuality, a very real, forbidden predatory nature with the act of penetration replaced with the biting of the neck and the drinking of the blood.
So with that in mind, let’s get into today’s two reviews, the 2008 Swedish language film, Let The Right One In and another 2008 film, this one in English, Twilight. Let’s begin with Let The Right One In.

Directed by Tomas Alfredson and based on the 2004 novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist of the same name, Let The Right One In, tells the tale of a 12 year old Swedish boy and his blossoming friendship with a 200 year old vampire.
Set in the 1980’s, Oskar is a young troubled boy, bullied at school, who spends his free time alone stabbing trees. It’s whilst doing this that he first meets Eli, someone who has recently moved into the area with a man who is apparently her father. She only comes out during the night and has an odd choice of clothing for the freezing cold weather.
Over time their friendship grows, cemented in the fact that they are both outsiders with no friends but each other. They begin communicating with each other by banging on the wall between their rooms when they can’t be outside together. Their relationship eventually reaches a point where Oskar decides to cement their relationship by cutting their palms and mixing their blood. At this point Eli cannot help herself and so her secret is revealed to Oskar.
This is about all I’m willing to reveal about the plot. I honestly cannot express how much you owe it to yourself to see this film. It manages to tell a sweet, romantic story between the mortal and the immortal, whilst balancing it perfectly with the acts of horrific gore that Eli must perpetrate in order to survive. It also touches on some of those familiar vampire themes mentioned earlier, particularly the loneliness of the immortal soul but it also manages to place equal emphasis on the loneliness of the mortal in this relationship as well.



And so to the second film in this double feature, Twilight, another vampire film based on a novel, this time the wildly popular 2005 first novel in the series of the same name and tells the tale of a seventeen year old American girl and her blossoming romance with a 108 year old vampire.
The story begins with Bella Swan moving from Arizona to Washington to live with her father since her mother and step-father are going on a bit of a road trip. At school she makes a few new friends and becomes interested in an apparently young man by the name of Edward Cullen. It seems at first that Edward is repulsed by Bella but a few days later he saves her life when she’s nearly hit by a van, apparently making use of super speed and super strength. A few days later Bella figures out Edwards secret.
In the sake of fairness I’m going to leave any revelations about the plot there, though this certainly isn’t a film you need to see in the same way as Let The Right One In. I was however surprised by it. I wanted so much to hate this film. It seems, though I consider my self politically liberal, when it comes to movie monsters I’m deeply, deeply conservative. I want my zombies slow and numerous, my werewolves to be vicious, instinct based killers and my vampires to be fanged and to worry a little more than sun burn if they go out in the daytime. And for the first part I did hate this movie. I felt cheated that after 45 minutes I’d seen more compost than blood and more dress shopping scenes than on screen kills. In fact most of the first half of the film seemed to be made up of awkward, furtive glances across a school cafeteria but in the second half of the film things pick up a little with an awesome special effects-laden baseball game and finally a little bit of violence.
Once more the main theme of this film is loneliness and accepting the fact that the immortal can find companionship in a human, but it also explores the relationship between the predatory nature of the vampires and how they regard humans, their prey, which I thought was a nice touch.
Overall I have to say I did enjoy Twilight. I’d definitely recommend it for a rental when it comes out on DVD and depending on the special features, I might even consider adding it to my collection. I mean, hell, I own The Super Mario Bros. movie on DVD and I don’t enjoy that at all.

Friday The 13th Month: Part 1

My video about the first Friday the 13th film. Yeah it's a little shitty but my laptop kept fucking up, it was half 4 in the morning and I just wanted to get it done.

Review: My Bloody Valentine 3-D

Hello readers, and welcome to the review of “My Bloody Valentine 3-D”, a simple story of romance, death, and an awesome five minute, full frontal sex scene that results in some big breasted blonde’s demise. The film’s starting credits begin with newspapers moving all over the place in 3-D, explaining a horrific accident that happened ten years ago in the little town of Harmony, leaving five men dead and put survivor Harry Warden into a coma; in my opinion, the best use of 3-D animation in the entire movie. One year later, on Valentine’s Day of course, Harry Warden unexpectedly awoke from his coma and went on a random killing spree; brutally murdering twenty-two people with a pickaxe before being killed himself.

Now a decade later, Tom Hanniger, the inexperienced miner who was responsible for the death’s of the five men and Warden’s coma, returns to Harmony on, you’ve guessed it, Valentine’s Day, still haunted by the deaths he caused. Subtle much? Hanniger, played by Supernatural star Jensen Ackles, is now dealing with his unresolved feelings for his ex-girlfriend Sarah (Jaime King), who is now married to his best mate Axel (Kerr Smith), the town’s sheriff and a killer sporting a miner’s mask and a pickaxe who is on the loose. Is Harry Warden back from the dead? Or is this a copycat killer? Either way, it’s not that interesting. It’s the 3-D deaths that make this ‘slasher’ film what it is, and they are stupidly grizzly.

The film does have some quality death scenes such as when the killer grabs one man and shoves a pickaxe up through his chin, yanking his weapon back which results in blood spattering to your left and a chunk of the guy’s chin flying to your right. Another one was when the killer swings the pickaxe into the back of a teenager’s head, which shows his eye on the end of the weapon as the pickaxe goes through his eye socket and comes out at you. But the most interesting part of the story has to be the ‘3-D Full-Frontal’.

The scene starts in a seedy hotel where a couple are having sex quite aggressively. The man climaxes, and then goes to leave, as you do, and grabs his jacket, switching off a camcorder he was using. Classy. The blonde starts shouting “I’m not a whore”, but the man chucks her some cash and laughs “You are now”. The man goes to get in his truck, with the blonde tailing him outside, stark naked, with a gun. The man opens his truck door and the killer smashes the pickaxe down into his head, leaving the blonde to run back to the hotel screaming her head off. She gets in and hides under the bed, leaving the killer to remove the duvet covers to reveal her, still naked, under the wire bed frame. She somehow manages to get up, using the bed frame as a shield, and backs into a corner of the room, trapping herself. Hilarious. The killer starts to pierce the wire frame, trying to get the blonde in the head with the pickaxe. After several attempts, the killer then realises what they’re doing wrong and then goes for the stomach, which they hit first time, leaving the blonde pinned to the wall, and you feeling horny after seeing a pair of 3-D breasts bounce around at you for the last five minutes. Nice.

Now, in small doses, the film isn’t half bad; but as a whole, it’s pretty poor. The script is good in places, but not enough to keep you interested. The actor’s did an okay job, but there just isn’t enough continuity for you to care about them when they start dying. The 3-D plotline is all this film has going for it, and even then it wasn’t always appropriate. Still, at least Director Patrick Lussier pulled off a tasteful sex scene. In 3-D. Which was awesome.

Cinepub Rating: Shandy (2 out of 5)

Review: Ils (Them)

Lately I’ve been broadening my horizons, stepping outside the boundaries of my linguistic comfort zone and been watching some amazing foreign language films. From Spain’s REC to South Korea’s Save The Green Planet (which may have actually made it into my top 20 favourite films of all time), the world of people speaking words I can’t understand holds many sparkling cinematic gems.

Now as someone who has a certain fondness for horror films, it seems obvious that a good place to start with foreign language films would be those that fall into the horror genre. Sometimes this pays off, as with the aforementioned REC and sometimes it doesn’t, as with Japanese horror films in general. Don’t know why but I just can’t seem to get into them. Anyway today I’m feel like wearing onions round my neck, carrying a baguette and smoking incessantly so we’re off to France! Ha, Ha! Stereotypes are fun!

The French film in question is Ils, known in English speaking circles as Them, released in 2006. To be honest I don’t really want to spoil any of the scenes in this film by describing them in much detail because I feel like it would ruin it so I’ll just give you a general overview of the film. Clementine is a French teacher living in a large remote house in a rural area around Bucharest, Romania with her writer boyfriend, Lucas. One night they are subject to a home invasion by a number of mysterious, hoodie-wearing strangers and things just escalate from there.

Now, the film is described as being in the horror genre but I must admit, I wasn’t particularly scared by it. I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was because reading the subtitles made it hard to concentrate on the scary action on screen but that didn’t seem to affect my terror levels during REC but after watching the film again, I think I realised what it was. Every moment that is set up to cause the viewer to jump is very, very obvious. Basically it seems as though each scare is telegraphed and so they just seemed ineffective to me. Maybe it’s because I’m jaded, seen too many attempts to make me jump in horror films in the past. On the other hand, I still jump whenever Ben Gardener’s head falls out of that boat in Jaws, so make of that what you will.

Now, because I didn’t find the film particularly scary, does that make it a bad film? Hell no. Once the action gets under way, the tension builds and builds to ridiculous degrees. As each unrelenting moment of panic passes, you find yourself empathising more and more with the two main characters and becoming more emotionally invested with their simple quest for survival. Yet despite all this escalating pressure this is still essentially a horror film without the horror and honestly I found it quite refreshing. It doesn’t go for the cheap torture gimmicks of most of the Saw films, no supernatural monsters and not one twisted serial killer. It’s pretty original and if you want to feel your heart rate increase to dangerous levels without shitting yourself with fear, I heartily recommend it.



Note: I watched the French film, Ils, with English subtitles. This trailer suggests that Them is dubbed into English. I don't know if that's true or if it was just for the trailer or what but in my opinion, original language with subtitles is always better.