Let The Right One In

Ever since Let The Right One In started the traveling the festival circuit back in January, it’s been universally praised and receiving awards at a rapid pace.  So when I had the opportunity to catch it at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival, I jumped at the chance.  How could you go wrong with a Swedish film about a bullied boy named Oskar who falls in love with the new girl next door, Eli, who just so happens to be a vampire?  I read the book by John Ajvide Lindqvist, so I knew what to expect before hand.  After reading it, I was left with the feeling that I had just experienced something that could not be replicated on screen. 

And I was right.  Or so I thought.

As I left the theater, I found myself wrestling with what I had just seen.  Did I like it?  Could it be that the praise directed toward the film was ill-advised?  Questions such as these ran through my head, so I decided to let the film simmer in my mind before coming to a final decision.  What I did know, was that the child actors who portrayed Oskar and Eli were absolutely stupendous.  Kare Hedebrant beautifully captures the lost soul mentality in Oskar, a feeling we all felt at some point in our lives.  Kare had the very difficult task of making us like a character that makes the slow transition from protagonist to eventual antagonist (although, that could be argued as it’s not shown in full on screen).  What’s more, he beautifully displays Oskar’s rapidly changing behavior as he is forced to grow up faster than he wants to.  In the much meatier role of vampire Eli, Lina Leandersson delivers one of the best child performances I’ve ever seen.  As the girl “who’s been twelve for a very long time”, Lina exudes a wonderfully frightening and frail aura, perfectly suited for Eli.  Her big, beautiful eyes reveal the hunger within her, while also masking the anguish and pain she is forced to deal with after every kill.     

While there are a number of secondary characters, it’s rare when Oskar and Eli aren’t at the focal point of the story.  And therein lies my dilemma.  There is a subplot involving one of Eli’s victims that I found to be monotonous, as it failed to serve any real purpose to the story.  I am aware that it was meant to conclude Oskar’s arc, as well as draw Oskar and Eli even closer together.  It’s just that I feel that the film fumbled with this storyline to the point that it almost flattened what came before it and forced the third act to resort to gratuitous violence and unnecessarily brutal behavior. 

After days of thinking about it, I realized that was my main problem with the narrative, as it felt like this character belonged in another movie.  It also didn’t help that I was aware of their eventual demise, as it’s blatantly revealed in the trailer (a bad marketing move, in my opinion).  Because of this minor glitch in the narrative, it was as if all that developed before it deflated. 

Furthermore, Oskar’s bullies were flat-out sociopaths in the picture, while in the book they were given a little more motivation behind their despicable actions.  I’m aware that a novel and its adaptation can never be one in the same, but I just felt that the bullies in the film came off as being callous and barbaric as opposed to kids just trying to exert their alpha male status on poor Oskar. 

Then, the “Kubrick Effect” kicked in.  It’s the effect that I felt whenever I watched a Kubrick film, in which I hated the film immediately after seeing it, only to have it grow on me the more I thought about it.  For Let The Right One In, I find myself thinking back to the story and how the narrative led to a crescendo of blood, gore and raw emotion between two children and I realized how much I cared about Oskar and Eli.  Furthermore, I realized how it cleverly played with vampire conventions in order to tell a seemingly innocent tale of bravery, love and trust. 

One aspect of the film I should stress, though, is the fact that if you go in expecting the next great vampire story, you will be sorely disappointed.  If you expect one of the more interesting interpretations of growing up within a rapidly changing and unforgiving world, then Let The Right One In might just surprise you.  Just don’t expect it to be the universally praised masterpiece many are calling it.

As an aside, if you happen to see Let The Right One In in theaters (and by all accounts, you should), I just hope you see it with a better audience than I did.  This particular Toronto After Dark audience was absolutely atrocious, laughing at the most unnecessary moments (I never realized snow could be so funny), while talking throughout vital scenes.  I understand that sometimes things get lost in translation when it comes to foreign films, but I was disgusted with the way the audience treated the film.  I can only hope that your audience will be better than mine.

7 out of 10

Repo!  The Genetic Opera

Never have I been a fan of musicals.  To be honest, the only ones I love are The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Sweeney Todd, while I only admire others for their particular form of unique entertainment. 

So when I heard that Darren Lynn Bousman, director of Saw II-IV, was to direct a heavy metal musical, I wouldn’t exactly say I was seething with absolute excitement.  Regardless, I attended its one and only screening at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival and after watching it with a full house of Gene Co. fans, I can’t praise it enough.  Really.

While on paper, Repo! may appear to be a mess of a musical, it works beautifully on screen, due to the fact that it has the balls to push what we know about movie musicals to the absolute limit.  Set in the not-too-distant future, Repo! tells the wonderfully Gothic tale of a society in which organ financing is the norm, ruled by a multi-million dollar corporation named Gene Co.  The downside is, if you can’t pay for your organs, you better be careful because Gene Co. will send the Repo Man to reclaim what’s theirs.  And he will succeed in his quest by any (grisly) means necessary. 

The cast is a veritable cornucopia of cult and B-level actors in the form of Anthony Stewart Head (as the Repo Man), Alexa Vega, Paul Sorvino, Bill Moseley, Sarah Brightman, Paris Hilton and Ogre (front man for the band Skinny Puppy).  And yes, the voices you hear on the soundtrack do indeed belong to the actors and I, for one, was incredibly impressed by not only their musical talent, but the flat-out raucous and unique nature of the metal and industrial sounds displayed on screen.  From Sorvino’s show-stopping operatic skills, to Brightman’s angelic voice to Head’s intense melodies, I found myself drawn deeper and deeper into this wild and crazy story. 

As I mentioned before, the audacity of the film is one of its strongest qualities.  Not only does it mix opera, with metal, with industrial, with punk, with pop, but it fuses classic horror, with modern horror, with melodrama, with suspense.  Within the first five minutes, if you’re not buying into the story, it’s only going to get worse for you as it makes no qualms with going to the absolute limit.  The way in which the film combines dialogue with song takes some getting used to, but the actors fully embrace their roles, which makes the songs much more accessible.  As a matter of fact, the soundtrack is readily available in music stores, so if you want a taste of the type of music on display, give a listen to Zydrate Anatomy, a great metal track with an irresistible, infectious and memorable beat that best personifies the mood prevalent throughout Repo!.

The filmmakers took a chance with making Repo! and I can’t emphasize enough how you have to see this film.  It has the makings of being a modern day Rocky Horror, but only if the right audience finds it.  And, if the screening I attended was any indication, there is most definitely an audience for this sort of picture.  With plenty of awe-inspiring set pieces, copious amounts of gore (spinal cords, intestines, hearts and heads aplenty) , fun performances (especially by Ogre and Paris Hilton, of all people ) and wonderful music, Repo!  The Genetic Opera proves that sometimes something different is what the audience needs. 

The film is being given a criminally limited release, so if you can find it in your city, watch it and prove to Lionsgate that there is an audience for Repo! .  For whatever reason, they are afraid of the film’s cultish roots, which is confusing since this is the same studio that released American Psycho, The Rules of Attraction and House of 1000 Corpses years back amidst a flurry of controversy.  So prove to Lionsgate that they are wrong and hopefully we won’t end up with a similar situation that faced Midnight Meat Train this past summer.  This film deserves to be seen by the largest audience possible.

8 out of 10