I saw this last week, and I liked it. It’s a Swedish Vampire movie set in 60s Sweden, so it has a simple and  old-fashioned feeling to it, with that sense of slight poverty that movies set in that time tend to have. Like most Vampire movies it is a love story, but this one involves 12 year old children and so mixes in an interesting element of pubescent self-discovery. There is no kiddy sex[1] but there is kiddy horror, which I always find a bit disturbing. There are only 1 or 2 real special effects moments in the movie, with most of the horror being done through creepy sounds and implication, in the best tradition of low-budget and/or Japanese horror movies – this one has a lot in common with the Ring for its low-key methods. For example, when the Vampire girl gets hungry the noise she makes is a mixture of doves cooing and a dog growling, which is very effective[2], and when she is hungry she starts to smell funny.

It’s difficult to say anything about the plot of this movie without giving a lot away. The ending is, of course, tragic, but  not in the sense one would expect at all. The key to the success of this movie is the simple and believable nature of the relationships as they become increasingly entangled in – or distant from – the central, slightly pathetic figure of the Vampire. A very interesting reinterpretation of the classic vampire mythos.

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fn1: though I don’t object to kiddy self-discovery movies which imply or investigate this. e.g His Dark Materials…

fn2: particularly for Yours Truly, who was pooed on today by a pigeon.