'A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night' vs 'Let Me In' vs 'Let The Right One In'
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Good as this was, Let The Right One In is a class above.
shareIt's not even a question that needs asking, it answers itself.
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Almost fully agree!!
Both, 'A Girl Walks...' and 'Only Lovers...' are about vampires but have nothing to do with horror. But at least 'Only Lovers...' had less pretentions while the director of 'A Girl Walks...' is shouting to you: look at this, this is art!!!
LTROI, hands down. Not that this is a bad film, in my opinion.
shareThis. Let the Right One In does nothing for me, its fûcking boring, and it's like: Oh, look at how stark everything is, here's another stark shot, isn't it stark? Let Me In is better that Let the Right One In too, if for no other reason than those two great scenes where Richard Jenkins is stalking his victims. Although as a whole Let Me In isn't great or anything either...and it sure the hell isn't better than A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.
sharei don't think let the right one in is particularly stark... it mostly depicts a small but lively swedish town.
sharegargarie 53 minutes ago (Thu Apr 23 2015 20:27:58)
IMDb member since April 2015
i don't think let the right one in is particularly stark... it mostly depicts a small but lively swedish town.
oskar on the snowmobile at his father's, kids in colorful clothing skating, warm indoor scenes between oskar and his mother, and with jocke, lacke, et al.... oskar's apartment building is a bit depressing but nothing really remarkable about it. the vampire's apartment was dreadful, but not much of the movie is set in it. overall i think the cinematography just conveyed a believable setting without making too big a deal about it being really stark. maybe you're just really averse to suburbs (can't blame you) or cold weather?
shareI live in a place where the trees sometime explode from the freezing rain.
shareso how would you go about filming a story set during a northern winter?
shareLook, I'm not saying shooting it in a stark way is the thing that's wrong with Let the Right One In. The movie acts as if shooting stark images in a stark manner is in and of itself horrifying...I just found it boring it didn't do anything. Yes, ok movie, you've set the mood, now do something with it. Your question in way too broad and nonspecific. But, like, if I were filming Let the Right One In, I would play more on the inherent creepiness of the relationship between the three big characters, and I would try to elect some horror and dread out of situations.
shareI'm not trying to convince you to like the movie or find it exciting, because sure it has some narrative problems, I just don't think the movie attempts to rely on visual starkness for horror in the way you're saying. It's based on a story set in a Swedish suburb and just depicts that without much fuss. It's an especially odd complaint to contrast with Girl Walks Home Alone, which IS pushing a stark aesthetic effect rather intensely (near-abandoned Sin City type town; black and white striped and caped protagonist filmed in black and white staring through broad, abandoned city streets). LTROI does—whether successfully or not is up to your judgement—play on the inherent creepiness of the relationship between the three main characters (though it curtails a lot of creepiness from the book)... I mean, it doesn't attempt to creep you out with any shots of Oskar's very normal apartment complex, but by showing Hakan and Eli moving in next door to him, avoiding their neighbors, blocking up the windows, and having loud fights, at the same time unexplained murders begin occurring in town. Another example, Eli ambushes Jocke under a bridge leading away from the restaurant where he was just drinking with his friends... The shot isn't visually stark, instead it relies on timing and pathos to make you worry for Jocke, who falls for Eli's rouse, and is tragically murdered in spite of his nearness to his friends. And surely Hakan stalking a young boy, failing and then maiming himself, then offering his blood and life to Eli is playing on the inherent creepiness of their relationship about as much as it can? All of which emphasizes, I think, Eli's intent to capture Oskar's loyalty in a similar way in the future, a growing unease about which underlines almost all of their scenes together.
shareFor what it's worth, I completely agree with your observations and sentiments...
shareMany things HAPPEN in LTROI. Not much happened in AGWHAAN. Loved the photography and camera setups though.
shareI live in a place where the trees sometime explode from the freezing rain.
What was the new flesh take on vampires presented in Let the Right One In?
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by paul-tait » 4 hours ago (Thu Apr 23 2015 22:05:02)Long live the new flesh.
IMDb member since May 2005
New "flesh" take? lol
Eli was unlike any vampire we had ever seen prior. Unless I am mistaken which I do not think I am. A 500+ old 12 year old!
Eli depended on her human familiar because she wanted to. She could certainly hunt on her own suggesting more of a comfort companion than an actual need. She did not have to live indoors, could go underground at night, but preferred to live indoors.
Oh yeah and she was really a castrated he!
This vampire we have no clue except the posters on her wall; which suggest she was made maybe in the late 70's early 80's. Heck we do not even get know her name.
It's Alive!
it has caused some viewers confusion, but i found it easy to intuit the meaning of that scene, coupled with eli's line, "i'm not a girl", as meaning he was a castrated boy. but honestly although i liked ltroi a lot the first time (i do think it was very novel; we never had a character that made the story of a vampire child so central to the plot, or explored it in such detail) i have a lot of problems with ltroi too, mostly having to do with that i think it's a little shallow and heavy on a kind of wish fulfillment fantasy... the book is much realer, and much fuller... it treats jocke, lacke, and virginia with a lot more humanity, expands oskar's acquaintances and inner thoughts (in a way that makes him frankly much less sympathetic), as well as making explicit eli's pattern of finding humans to help her. i'm not sure how these things could have been added to the film, but in their absence the plot deals mostly with the romance between eli and oskar, and it does feel a little empty. it's still around a 6.5 or 7/10 for me.
shareSee, I just took Eli's line to mean she wasn't human anymore. Like: I'm not a girl, I'm a monster. It felt like a warning. Without the backstory, why would a person guess the girl playing a girl is actually a boy? Even with the other scene I just took that as implied weird body horror stemming from becoming a vampire.
shareyeah, i think that line has a dual meaning that includes your interpretation. i'm not sure how to explain that a person without backstory would guess eli was castrated, except... that's what the scar looked like, and the line confirms it to a viewer who is looking for it. for viewers who didn't get it, omitting this isn't a big deal, obviously... for me though it was interesting and its omission was a major point of detraction in the american remake.
shareIt just looked too "neat" for me to think that's what it was meant to be. If they had cut to a mangled stump I would have gotten it, although I get why they maybe wouldn't want to do something like that. But as it is I just figured it was like what happened to Neo's mouth in The Matrix, like they were showing the act of becoming a vampire changes the body in ways you've never really thought of before.
I didn't mind the omission in the American version because I didn't really think the original movie did anything with it.
Fair enough, I guess, but I think your expectations are a little unusual... When does vampirism ever involve body horror of that sort (Dracula's hairy palms, I guess)? And why would you expect castration to leave "a mangled stump"? The organ is severed cleanly at its base with a knife, the bleeding stopped, and the wound allowed to heal. It looks exacty like what it is. (NSFW: Chinese eunuch: http://www.simbacom.com/brian/blogs/eunuchs/eunuch01.jpg) I appreciate that this is not a familiar concept to most people, but there it is all the same.
The book does much more with the matter (largely via Hakan's pedophilia), but even with its limited exploration in the film I think it is important, as an indicator of the suffering and strangeness of Eli's life... It shows him to be doubly excluded from humanity, stunted in growth and cut off by his sexual mutilation, not only by his unliving state. Even as a living human being, Eli would have faced a strange and, in a way, deadened life. If you should happen to watch the film again, think about this during the "Be me for a little while" scene, and see if it changes your view at all.
I had no expectations of that, that's what I thought the movie was doing. What I thought the movie was doing just turned out to also be more interesting.
shareWhat was more interesting?
shareThe idea that becoming a vampire changing a person in a way I hadn't seen before is more interesting than Eli being a boy that had his dick and balls cut off. One is an interesting addition to the vampire mythos, the other is something the movie never really tells you about, and does nothing with.
shareI see... So castration is interesting, but only if it is perpetrated by a supernatural transformation, and not by an act of human violence?
sharegargarie » 1 hour ago (Mon Apr 27 2015 18:38:27)
IMDb member since April 2015
I see... So castration is interesting, but only if it is perpetrated by a supernatural transformation, and not by an act of human violence?
Well, I don't know what you want out of a vampire movie, but I generally expect a certain fidelity to the basic myth without bizarre novelties added to it. Vampire stories have become so pervasive that the myth now serves as a background through which to tell human stories, such that the differences between one vampire story and another consist not in what weird twist can be placed on the myth, but in what human stories the myth can be used to tell. We know what vampires are like, drink blood, live forever, burn in the sun, etc. But this particular vampire was, as a human child, emasculated, made into a eunuch, a thing which has happened to millions of people in many parts of the world throughout history, quite frequently even until about 200 years ago. If that seems mundane compared to "Being a Vampire", that's because it IS, because stories about vampires are stories about beings who once were human beings, living mundane lives. It wasn't put there to be shocking, but because it's an important part of the vampire's humanity. Vampire stories frequently tell of unusual people who have survived into the present from the distant past, with strange stories to tell. It's true that the film didn't manage to include enough of the story from the book (even if they had had time, I suspect they wouldn't have wanted to go near all the pedophilia involved), but I'm puzzled by your boredom with the concept. If the character had suffered some other, more familiar torture and mutilation, perhaps having lost a hand or an eye, would that be more palatable to you?
It sounds like your second paragraph has something to do with an argument that other people have made, about the importance of genderless love, or whatever, which I haven't made and don't care about. Of course Oskar doesn't care whether she is a girl or a boy. That isn't the point, because what he loves is Eli's strength, her kindness to him, and the fact that she kills people. He doesn't appear to have any sexual interest at all, if nothing else maybe just because he's very young. I argued a few posts above (I edited the post, you may not have seen it) that the point of including the scene is different, and related to depicting the suffering and alienation of Eli.
I don't think LTROI is a perfect film and thought the castrated shot should have been left out because it was just a distraction since it wasn't followed up on. For me, the main thing that made LTROI so original was the childhood friendship between Oskar and Eli - never saw that in a vampire film before. AGWHAAN has incredible photography (better than LTROI) and a great idea/setup, but doesn't do nearly enough with it. It really a shame.
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equals three vampire films, two of which are based on the same books. some say option three being a carbon copy of option 2. option 2 and 3 having nothing else in common with option 1.
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