 Catching Up
In this Swedish film from director Tomas Alfredson, author of the book of the same title, John Ajvide Lindqvist, also delivers the screenplay, allowing the original writer some varying creative leeway on the film. Generally a good, or at least promising thing, overall. This particular film starts out with a kid named Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) practicing his killing moves and speech with a knife in his room with his shirt off. So pretty disturbing stuff from the get-go. However we quickly learn that Oskar is a victim of constant bullying, and our perspective changes from "I dunno if I wanna watch this" to "Let's see where this goes" petty abruptly. It's a good way to show us in just a few scenes just how troubled this boy is. Soon, we are also introduced to the likes of Eli (Lina Leandersson), a girl who has moved into a neighboring apartment. The pair befriend each other, and we learn that there's more than meets the eye with Eli when we discover that she's, in fact, a vampire. However, this is unknown by Oskar. All he understands is that this girl seems to like him for who he is, and helps him out with his bullies. Much of the pursuing story has to do with the more tragic side of being a vampire; having to consume nothing but blood, perhaps the idea of losing your loved ones, and in Eli's case, trying to be friends with a boy who seems understands her, but without revealing what she is. And yeah, there's a romantic side to this as well. That said, the aspects of vampirism are a bit more scattered through the movie. The main focus of this IS the relationship between Oskar and Eli. I personally found that they used it more to show how much Eli cares for Oskar as opposed to just showing off a bunch of special effects. In fact, the overall execution of anything vampiric here is fairly subtle, once again proving that big budgets aren't necessarily... necessary. I think I can actually admit without much hesitation that this falls somewhere on my list of favorite vampire movies. Although there are some truly disturbing moments within the film, it's just a different take on the whole thing. With it's moderately artistic execution, it's an intriguing change from any vampire stuff I'm more used to. By bringing down the aspects of Eli being a vampire and focusing more on the blossoming friendship, the whole thing could be seen symbolically as how strong a friendship can hold upon discovering stranger and stranger things about your friend. Will you be scared off, or will you stay because you still like who the person is? 4/5
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