Twilight and Let The Right One In

Fads are very difficult entities to judge. Many of them come around and stick around just long enough for the majority of the general public to loathe them entirely, with just enough hardcore stragglers sticking around to keep the dreaded fad in the limelight. The recent infatuation with vampires is certainly an example. I talked to an employee at FYE in Bellingham, Wash., not too long ago and asked him about the plethora of Twilight merchandise that surrounded me. He told me how much customers seemed to love the stuff, even specifying the popularity of the Edward Cullen cardboard stand-up that stared me in the face with its yellowish eyes.

Ironically, I was in the store that day to find a different vampire movie. I read on various blogs during the past year about Let The Right One In, a Swedish indie film with some similar themes to those present in Twilight. Make no mistake, these are completely different films, but there exists an intriguing comparison to be made between the two.

The similarities are, on the surface, numerous. Both are based on books, and both are centered around romance and young love, and in both, one person within that romance is a vampire. The similarities don't stop there, but that's not the point. The point, I suppose, is quality.

Twilight, based on the book by Stephenie Meyer, is the story of Bella, a high schooler who moves from Arizona to live with her dad, the police chief in the small, perpetually-gloomy-and-rainy town of Forks, Wash. She meets a boy named Edward at school, and happens to fall in love with him. The only catch: he's a vampire.

I forced myself to watch Twilight before writing this, for obvious reasons. I went into the viewing expecting to hate what I saw, and honestly found myself a little surprised. It's not a great film, or even a good one, but it certainly is not horrible either. Twilight suffers a plight similar to movies like Watchmen and Spider-Man 3. If the director had gone a different way with some of the design choices or just tweaked a few aspects here and there, the movie would be far superior to the one fans saw in theaters upon release. But, the fact is, director Catherine Hardwicke seemed to like the laughable running scenes and sometimes-terrible dialogue. The special effects don't help either.

All that aside, the biggest problem I have with Twilight is its apparent claim to innovation. The vampires in this movie can see themselves in mirrors, go out in the daylight (they sparkle instead of die), eat animals instead of people, and even read minds and see the future in some cases. I consider this to be changing the mythology, not blazing new trails in the vampire sub-genre. True innovation, in my opinion, is taking a mythology that's been done to death and doing something original with it.

Enter Let The Right One In. Released in 2008, this film, based on the novel of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist (no relation), tells the story of Oskar, a young bullied schoolboy who befriends the neighbor girl, Eli. As you may have guessed, she's a vampire.

This is a wonderful movie, for more reasons than the simple fact that it's a foreign indie and film nerds like me are required to like it because of that. Let The Right One In is, at its core, about children. Both these kids turn in their first performances in the realm of acting, and both do a remarkable job. Never once was I taken out of the film by their lack of ability or experience, because I would guess they were playing themselves most of the time. I would imagine that there's an innocence that comes with casting new child actors. They're uncorrupted by the ideas of filmmaking as an industry, and they can turn in truly genuine performances. The argument that they're playing themselves could be made, but if playing oneself leads performances like these, then I'll take it.

That's not to say Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart were bad. Stewart actually surprised me with her very real-ish performance as a "normal" high school kid. Again, she could be playing herself, but it works. Pattinson has his moments, but after a while the audience hopefully understands that Edward being with Bella could have dangerous consequences. We get it, Edward, stop repeating yourself.

I stopped in at Wal-Mart, Target, Blockbuster and FYE before finally coming across the last available copy of Let The Right One In at Best Buy, all the while finding myself under the creepy, watchful gaze of Robert Pattinson. I'm writing this not to bash on Twilight, but to encourage everyone to grab an indie film every so often. I'd recommend researching them first, obviously, because indies can be a little out-there (by that I mean ridiculously explicit or mind-tripping weird). Let The Right One In is one of the few vampire movies we saw during the same year as Twilight, but it flew under the radar because of its indie and foreign status. It's easy to write off those unheard-of movies you see on the Blockbuster shelf as shoddy direct-to-DVD movies, but that description doesn't always fit. Just because you've heard of Twilight doesn't necessarily mean it's a good movie, and just because you've never heard of Let The Right One In doesn't mean it's terrible.

All I'm saying is, watch an indie film sometime, and sorry, Napoleon Dynamite doesn't count. You might be surprised with what you find.