Shawn's Let the Right One in Review

2008 Movie #164 - Let the Right One In

Well it's 2009 now so really I should be done with this blog. I basically am, just have this review and then one more to write. Then it's the top and bottom 10, followed most likely by a year in a review that will come in the next few days. That may conclude with a link to my 2009 movie blog but I doubt the goal of that one will be to see all of the movies.

Anyway, this is another movie that kept showing up on best movies of the year lists and got me curious. Now this movie is exactly what Twilight should have been. It's essentially a vampire love story, only the kids are younger, and the movie is well...good. I don't know if it will crack my top 10 list since recently there has been a whole lot of worthy candidates for it, but it's a really good movie that's for sure.

It's getting pretty hard to do an original take on the vampire genre. It seems like just about everything has been done with it now. Kudos to this movie because it actually manages to take the whole vampire thing in a new direction and give you something you haven't seen before in the genre. I would qualify this movie more as a drama than a horror movie, but there are some definite horror moments in there. There is a good amount of gore, including some stuff that actually made me cringe, which is getting harder and harder to do these days. There is some creepy imagery as well but for the most part, this is a fucked up romance movie.

The acting is top notch. You know it's really good when you can tell even though nobody is speaking English. I forgot to mention this movie is subtitled but whatever, it's worth it you lazy bastards who don't want to read. You are invested in the main story and you really, really, want to know what's going to happen. The movie keeps you guessing and you are never really sure how things are going to turn out.

It's another example of a simple story, but one that is just told really fucking well. It terrifies me that there is already talks of doing an American remake of this one. There's no need! Give this one a wider release and call it a day. You're only going to fuck it up by trying to make it more like Twilight. That's the beauty of this movie...it's everything Twilight isn't.

****/5