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movie review - Let The Right One In

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2011.04.17

This is a vampire movie that's actually good. No, I mean actually good. It's about a bullied boy living in a low-rent (or government housing) complex with people who care for him but are either elderly, worked off their feet, or otherwise unable to nurture him. His father's in a relationship with a man who doesn't want the boy in his father's life, and the bullies at school seem intent on actually killing him.

Along the way the boy notices a mysterious girl in the area. It turns out she's got a man-servant whom she showers with abuse. She's a vampire, scraping by in a civilization that's grown up around her over centuries and resentful of her lot in light. When her man-servant fails to secure blood from a hospital she has him drink acid but when even that fails to kill him she discards him.

Because she's got her eyes on a new toy, now.

Strongly recommended.

rand()m quote

In the wake of 9/11, we [in America] have made the decision as a society that we can never again create something in which we can take pride, for fear that someone will destroy it. Moreover, we must suppress any trace of individualism, lest someone have the desire to rise above the bland sameness that protects us. I have, alas, no idea how to recapture our courage.

—Anonymous post to boingboing.net, 2009