As with the maddening fast zombies, filmmakers and authors are constantly tinkering with the vampire formula. In “Twilight,” the vampires can live in sunlight and don’t require human blood to live (among other things, so I’ve heard; I haven’t seen it). It’s alright to have fictional creatures with idiosyncrasies and rules. Just don’t call them vampires. Call them something new. I don’t know, be creative.
Or call them nothing. Eli (Lina Leandersson) requires fresh blood to live, she doesn’t age, doesn’t feel pain, and she needs to be invited in. If not invited, blood seeps from her pores. It’s not recommended. Hilariously, “Let the Right One In” has this authenticity, but doesn’t even think of itself as a vampire movie. When Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) asks Eli whether she’s a vampire, she shrugs and replies simply, (paraphrased) “I need blood to live.”
Eli finds a worthy friend/boyfriend/blood collector? in Oskar. Bullied at school and ignored at home, he spends his nights sociopathically stabbing tree trunks. “Let the Right One In” takes place in the eighties, which may explain the cruelty of the bullies. (According to teen comedies of the eighties, it was the era of the homicidal bully.) During the most traumatizing school field trip in history, they threaten to throw him in a frozen lake. Also, two younger kids find a frozen body during the same trip.
The meeting of Eli strengthens Oskar’s normally anemic responses to danger. To impress her, he smacks a bully’s ear with a long stick during that field trip. Later, she is able to kill an (adult) intruder when he can’t, violently gulping the victim's blood as he falls to the ground. They make such a heartwarming team.
*Which is really in Alaska, but at similar latitude.
Sick of these guys yet?
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