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Tomas Alfredson (Sweden, 1955) debuted with Bert - Den Siste Oskulden/ Bert - The Last Virgin (1995) and Fyra Nyanser av Brunt/ Four Shades of Brown (2004).
The vampire horror movie
Lat den Ratte Komma In/ Let the Right One In
(2008),
adapted from John Ajvide Lindqvist's 2004 novel,
is actually a bizarre romantic story.
The story is not only implausible (even by the standard of vampire movies) but
also lacks elements to make it compelling, perhaps simply because it goes on for too long.
The story is set in a winter of the 1980s. The landscape is covered in snow.
Oskar is a melancholy and silent 12-year-old, frequently victim of bullying at school by a vicious kid named Conny, and lives with his mother, separated from his father.
He hides a knife, dreaming of the day that he can take revenge on Conny.
One evening he meets Eli, the girl who lives next door with her father Hakan.
She tells him right away that they cannot be friends but she is intrigued that
he is dreaming of killing someone.
Hakan coldly prepares for an excursion to the woods and then we see him
killing the first person he meets and hanging him upside down to harvest his
blood. A dog is attracted to the scene and the owners looking for the dog
stumble on the dead body, while Hakan is forced to flee. At home we hear the
girl Eli complain: the blood was for her.
Conny and his friends cruelly beat up Oskar but Oskar refuses to tell the truth to his mother. However,
Oskar and Eli become friends and Oskar tells Eli the truth. She encourages
encourages him to fight back.
One night Eli assaults a drunk, jumping like an animal and sucking his blood. A man witnesses the murder from the window but somehow doesn't call the police.
Later, Hakan picks up the corpse and drags it the nearby lake.
Conny and his friends humiliate Oskar by dumping his pants in a urinal so that Oskar has to walk home in short pants despite the freezing temperature.
Hakan captures a teenager at the school, hangs him upside down and is about to kill him when the kid's friends interrupt him. Certain to be captured and not wanting his identity to be known, Hakan pours acid on his face. He is hospitalized with a horrible disfigured face.
Eli can climb buildings like a rat. She breaks into the seventh-floor room where Hakan is kept. Hakan offers his neck to her. She sucks his blood and then Hakan's lifeless body drops from the seventh floor to the ground.
Eli has become Oskar's girlfriend but warns Oskar that she is not a girl.
Oskar finally revolts against Conny but the result is that the school informs
his mother who gets mad at him. The school's principal was distracted because two children had found the corpse hidden by Hakan.
Oskar discovers that Eli is a vampire when he invites her to a blood ritual and she avidly sucks the blood like an animal.
Eli tells Oskar that she is 12 like him, but has been 12 for a long time.
Eli is desperate for blood. She attacks a young woman, Virginia, but Virginia's boyfriend arrives in time to save the woman's life. Virginia, hospitalized,
finds two holes in her neck and realizes that she can't stand sunlight.
She realizes that she has become a vampire and tells her boyfriend that she
doesn't want to live anymore. She begs a nurse to let sunlight in: her body
bursts into flames.
Virginia's boyfriend somehow figures out that the attacker is Eli and where she lives. He enters Eli's apartment and discovers her sleeping in the bathtub, covered by a blanket. He is about to kill her when
Oskar attacks him with his knife, and Eli wakes up and avidly sucks up the blood.
Eli kisses Oskar with her lips still stained with the man's blood.
Eli (a 12-year-old!) drives away to leave town.
Conny and his friends prepare a trap to kill Oskar. They corner him at the
swimming pool where an older friend gives Oskar a choice: to risk drowning or lose an eye. Eli attacks the bullies with superhuman strength and leaves behind
only body parts.
Oskar boards a train, and Eli is his luggage, hidden in a box.
Eli taps the Morse code for "kiss" and Oskar taps back the same code.
Then came the
English-language espionage movie Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
and the thriller The Snowman (2017).
(Copyright © 2024 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )
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