This one made me think. A lot.
Stripped down to the only parts that feel like they matter, this is a tender and touching story of pure, innocent friendship between two children who feel they have noone else. Those scenes between the two ARE the movie…everything else is irrelevant, like a comedic side-story thrown in for a few gratuitous laughs, merely to put space between one interesting scene and the next.
The problem is it’s not comedic. It’s disturbing, depressing, brutal, and merciless.
It’s terribly troubling…if the folklore vampire (here, or anywhere else) is so utterly Evil for killing human beings to survive, what does that say about human beings, since we are the only species that actively preys on itself for FUN? We hurt each other, even kill each other…out of greed, lust, jealousy, sometimes just pure sadism.
The very fact that I have morality makes me re-evaluate what I believe, and why, sometimes. When a horror film can raise legitimate moral questions that can’t be easily answered in black and white terms, that’s a rarity.
Something to think about. Or, more probably, not.
Grade: B
6/3/12: “Think think think, just think about it…” Grade: B+
6/24/12: This, I think, is “goth” in the purest, most unpretentious, morally ambiguous, and darkly beautifully spare way. Quite an achievement, really. Grade: A-