Confessions of a vampire junkie
Bloodcur-dling. Unnerving. Chilling. And I loved it! The movie Let Me In, helmed by Matt Reeves, which is an adaptation of the Swedish film Låt den Rätte Komma In, deserves a place among the top 10 best vampire movies of all time. And this is saying a lot because I am a vampire aficionado — well, at least a self-proclaimed one.
Basically, I’m a junkie for all things vampiric. I have read Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the Lestat novels of Anne Rice, Charlaine Harris’s True Blood series, and — even if I do hate the Twilight vampires — all the Twilight books. If it is a vampire movie, then I’d be in line to watch it. I’ve watched all the Blade movies, Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula, the Twilight movies (well, these I don’t watch by choice but under duress since I have to accompany my wife and our nieces to watch them), as well as the quintessential Hammer Films’ Dracula movies starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. If Christopher Lee doesn’t sound familiar to you, he played Saruman in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Why did I enjoy Let Me In? First, the actors are excellent. Kodi Smit-Mcphee plays the sensitive young boy who befriends his neighbor, a vampire played by Chloe Moretz, and despite their youth, both actors display the range of emotions, including fear, love, lust, and pathos — all necessary for a good vampire movie.
Good vampire movies aren’t just about blood and gore — you go to zombie or slasher movies like Saw for that — but are rather about seduction, loss, sexual awakening, and, at its core, morality. A good vampire story is essentially a morality play: good overcoming evil, or, if like in Let Me In, the ending might on the surface appear morally ambivalent, nonetheless, what is good and evil are made starkly clear. In fact, the earliest vampire legends, which some historians claim to be as old as man himself, existing even during prehistoric times, always portrayed the vampire as evil.
This is why I have such a problem with the Twilight vampires, not because the Twilight series isn’t well written fiction or isn’t an enjoyable read, but rather because of its moral ambivalence. Vampires are undead abominations so they are, intrinsically, bad news, unlike the Twilight vampires, specifically Edward Cullen, who is the epitome of goodness and self-restraint (“I can’t make out with you Bella! I might drain your blood!”) as well as otherworldly handsome, even though he appears to have overdosed on metathione or papaya whitening soap.
In a moral universe, the equation is simple: humans equal good, vampires equal evil.
And vampires are a powerful embodiment of evil. Unlike werewolves, zombies, or mummies, which are such obvious physical manifestations of what is bad, vampires exemplify the true nature of evil. Evil, to be effective, must be seductive. You see a zombie or a werewolf and you run fast in the opposite direction. But not so with vampires: you see them and they draw you in. Thus, the great power of evil is not that men are coerced by fear to commit wrong, rather its power emanates from its ability to seduce men — and women — to do the wrong thing. This is why the vampire is often portrayed as a darkly magnetic man or a voluptuous and sexy woman. It is the forbidden fruit: bright and shiny on the outside but one bite brings a lifetime of regret.
In fact, what makes Let Me In such a riveting film is that we see the fall of a decent and largely ordinary boy into becoming a vampire’s “familiar,” meaning the henchman or human guard of the vampire. And the fall is predicated on the human experience of friendship blossoming into what others might view as “love,” though I could never conceive of genuine love involving something that is evil.
In short, we empathize with the character of Kodi Smith-Mcphee, who is constantly bullied and friendless, developing confidence and standing up for himself because of his relationship with the young female vampire. As a viewer, you are attached and attracted to the both characters, the young boy and the vampire, because of the humanness and brokenness that we recognize in ourselves, and yet you are justly repelled at the same time. Just like the experience of sin — we are attracted to what is forbidden and yet we are repelled by the knowledge that what we seek to do is wrong.
So if you want an anti-Twilight or just a good movie to creep you out, then this is for you. Don’t expect too much action though because the fear generated by the film isn’t in Filipino, the gulat or jump-out-of your-seat kind. Instead, the fear is atmospheric. You have a sense of dread because you essentially know what is going to happen — the moral fall of a boy — but you are hoping that perhaps he might step away from the precipice. Simply, it is not a cheap-thrills movie but one that is founded on real horror: the fear that evil is our neighbor and is merely waiting for our invitation to enter.
Perhaps this is why the vampire legend has existed alongside the history of man and why every culture has some iteration of the vampire: because evil is universal, walking, lockstep, with humanity. Do vampires really exist? I hope not. But the persistence of vampire lore speaks of the human need to confront evil and to understand its nature. Because only when we understand the true nature of evil can we finally overcome it or, at the very least, keep it at bay.
* * *
E-mail adel.tamano@yahoo.com.
