Love Life, Hate Kittens

After much anticipation for Let the Right One In, I’m pissed off.

It’s an overhyped foreign film at its finest.

No really I get it. The slow pacing. The deliberate expressions. The long, heavy pauses between characters. The melancholy backdrop. The grim reality of a modern day vampire. The cold brutality of it backdropped by a teenage love story. The symbolism of hidden desires and oppression. I get the back story. I get how symbolic it is that Oskar (the emo boy) will take Hakan’s place to be Eli’s caretaker. That she’s probably been doing this for a long time. That she kills out of need but Oskar harms people out of personal frustration. Whose really the monster? And yes. The twist. The starck teenage love story not only detered by Eli being a vampire but also a castarated boy. Oops did I spoil it for you?

The film is not ‘seductive’ or ‘captivating’ as critics would like you to believe. They want to tell you the kids are great actors when in truth unless playing an open mouthed half retard is great acting in Swede, these kids have zero charisma. Sure there are hilarious elements - the leg whipping, Oskar’s gay dads, crazy cat lady, etc. But take out the vampire elements and you have a movie about two cross dressing emo kids who are likely to shoot up a school in the near future.