DVD Review: Let The Right One In

After reading Vic's posts about how this movie is his all time vampire top five, I was excited to see it at the video store on Tuesday night aka Movie night or Bad TV night. Little did I know that Obama had a press conference, so I pretty much missed the whole thing.

I like vampire movies, even though I suffered through an extremely scary Japanese one when I was 6, they are still very alluring. And I was desperately trying to wash off the diamond-coated glistening-in-the-sun crap that is Twilight, so I asked CuteCub if we could watch this together as if I was asking permission to adopt this puppy home. It wasn't disappointing.

Let The Right One In is about a young boy named Oskar who had been constantly bullied by some kids at school. He goes out to the courtyard of his apartment complex every night with his pocket knife stabbing at trees as if he's plotting to fight back at the other kids but he never did. One night, he saw a new family moving in and at the following night he met the young girl; 12 years old Eli. Eli and Oskar became fast friends and turned out that Eli is much more than just a girl and despite their differences they slowly became lovers.

Alright, Eli is a vampire but the story is not as much as a vampire story but it's more have to do with the romance between the two young'uns. While the abuse Oskar gets from the school kids get more severe, Eli encouraged him to fight back or else they won't stop. At the same time, the side story is how Eli's needs are getting meet and all the other vampire nuances. It's more vampire than Twilight for sure.

Although I do like it, I have to say a lot of elements were a little distracting. For the first 10 minutes, I couldn't be sure that Eli was really a girl which I think it was done intentionally since Eli claimed a few times that she's indeed not a girl. And I've never realized how similar Swedish is to English, some words and sentences almost sound the same. Of course, it's kinda entertaining at the same time. We can't help but laugh. The movie was shot in winter and Eli's breath showed vapor and I can't help but wonder if I real vampire would cause it or if it's too hard to CGI it away. Oskar also demonstrated traits to be a psychopath and I was sure that he'd get blamed for various deaths.

Nothing in the movie turned out too scary and can't help but feel that it is at times bland. Until I found out that the cause of the blandness might be due to bad translations. Turns out after the movie released in theaters with the good subtitles, they redid it and dumbed it down for the DVD. So the theatrical experience is quite different and in some degree I feel robbed. Strange, eh? B-