It’s boy-meets-girl in this not-so-cuddly Swedish import, in which the main characters are two twelve-year-olds. Oskar, chosen victim of the school bully, wonders why his new friend Eli doesn’t know her birthday, why she doesn’t wear a jacket, and why she doesn’t like candy. He doesn’t pry too much, but we know better, having seen another of her kind dispatch one of the locals and drain his blood. I've never completely understood the enduring appeal of vampire movies, and can have trouble suspending my disbelief. I mean, if vampires were really roaming about Sweden, how come the country’s murder rate was so low? Yet this one draws you in as much with drama as horror.
The movie is not highly stylized, or particularly rich with vampire lore. I have no idea whether Eli is afraid of garlic. The minor characters—Oskar’s divorced parents, the older vampire, who may or may not be Eli’s father, the bully—barely register. What does is the wintry desolation of the setting, an apparently isolated town near the Soviet border, some time during the Brezhnev era. Not all of the scenes are in darkness, but nearly all evoke the mood of a lonely twelve-year-old. Like nearly any good vampire movie, the violence escalates, but it’s the mood that will haunt.
IMDB link
viewed 11/13/08 [screening at Ritz Bourse]; reviewed 11/18/08
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