TIFF '09 Day Deux

One of the little things that I always notice when I'm in Toronto is the pedestrian crossing signal. The Lite-Brite man looks so confident in his stride, no hint of the slight trepidation apparent in the posture of his American counterpart. I finally figured out why that is: universal health care! You see, the Canuck doesn't care if he gets hit by some reckless driver. There's no chance he'll lose his house or face financial ruin due to exorbitant medical costs. Of course he can walk across the street with that cocksure strut. Pinko bastard...

Ahem, back to the films, yes?

Day 2 of the festival was pretty light viewing, only two films.


The first was a Filipino film, an earnest little movie called If I Knew What You Said about a rebellious young girl who reluctantly befriends a deaf kid at a camp. The film feels competently shot most of the time. It looks like it was shot on DV which added to the somewhat amateurish feel of the production. Actually it felt like something that might play as an ABC Afterschool Special. There was an interesting part showing how the deaf kids learned to dance to music they couldn't technically hear. Also I found myself intrigued at how easily the characters went back and forth from Tagalog to English. Other than that, I couldn't really recommend it. Still glad I saw it though.

Daybreakers, the second Midnight Madness film turned out to be much better than I ever expected. I'd watched the Spierig brothers first film, Undead on the dearly departed Monsters HD. It was decent enough with a dash of quirky humor. Didn't really give any clue that they would be capable of this.


The world of Daybreakers is one where vampires outnumber the human population to the point where the vampires fear humans may go extinct. This is causing the dominant vampire society (which is practically identical to our own w/r/t social/economic structures) to become unstable. It's also causing undo stress to our protagonist, Ethan Hawke, who is working nights and pulling all-dayers in order to perfect a blood substitute. Hawke's vampire hematologist also has a conscience and refuses to taste human blood, preferring to sustain himself on animals instead. He not only wants to find a blood substitute but save humankind from being cattle. Of course, there are others who have different plans. Sam Neill gives a great turn as the corporate reptile employing Hawke who wants to preserve not only the vampire way of life but his own economic fortunes.

What so impressed me about the film was all the little details that the Spierig brothers managed to cram into the picture. Their vampire world doesn't feel so much like a fantastical concoction as the natural and plausible result of their deceptively clever scenario. I sat there never doubting the world they'd created. The film doesn't overdo it on the action, nor does it try to shoehorn in any unnecessary love interests. It just handles its business.

Oh, and I forgot to mention it has a kick-@$$ Willem Dafoe element to it.

Every time I think the vampire genre is dead, that there's no more juice in that turnip, something like Daybreakers happens. I'm not complaining. I'll probably pay to see this again.

Movie Recommendation of the Month

Why does the vampire myth endure? Vampires or something approximating them have been with us since before the advent of Christ. Putting vampires on film is almost as old as the motion pictures themselves. The archetype for the modern vampire is of course Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a book I should probably read someday. Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles facilitated my earliest and deepest forays into vampire lore. Before she became born-again, Rice was one of my favorite writers. She could spin a tale replete with its own intricate mythology that left you marveling at the breadth and depth of it all. She was my J.K. Rowling. Interview with a Vampire, The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned were some of my favorite books as a teenager. After college I got hip to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (second greatest show of all time behind The Wire; I can prove this empirically), but after the first two seasons that really wasn’t much about vampires. But I digress.

Back to the question: why do vampires still intrigue us? For my money, vampires are the perfect monster. In most incarnations they are always just slightly inhuman in appearance, many times too perfect, ageless and unchanging. You could write a dissertation on the symbolic importance of blood and drinking blood and then you throw sex into the mix. Oy. The vampire can represent almost anything you want and that’s what makes it such a great template to work with. As long as you adhere to a few rules, you can write a vampire story that’s a metaphor for whatever the heck you want.


Enter “Let the Right One In”, a Swedish vampire movie about the horrors of adolescence, the beguiling nature of love and of course preying on humans. Oskar a delicate blond boy in both features and temperament spends his days getting bullied at school and his nights fantasizing about revenge upon his tormentors. Eli is the strange girl who has just moved next door and has a habit of hanging out on the frozen bars of the Jungle Jim in her pajamas oblivious to the cold. After a couple of awkward interactions, the two become fast friends. The movie’s plot isn’t especially suspenseful or thrilling (although there are genuine heartbeat-raising moments). What drew me in was the relationship between Oskar and Eli. It felt so natural. The child-actors do an excellent job. Oskar's vulnerability masked beneath his aloofness and Eli's loneliness buried just beneath her lone wolf posturing are both communicated beautifully.

The movie does set-up some interesting mysteries. Who is the man who seems to be Eli’s father? Does Eli truly love Oskar? Is she capable? Her character is morally ambiguous. She seems to have some compunction about killing, but then she just lets other people do it for her. She’s more than capable of securing her own food and perhaps doing a much better job of it, so why the need for a surrogate? How old is she? At one point she states, “I am twelve. But I’ve been twelve for a long, long time.” One wonders is she still emotionally twelve as well? It is clear that she manipulates Oskar, but how different is this from any other twelve year old? Also the question of sexuality is left lingering as Eli tells Oskar more than once that she is not a girl. Does she just mean that she is a vampire and therefore lacks gender or is "she" really a "he"? The movie lets this go unresolved even teasing us with a shot in the film that leaves the question even more open-ended (apparently in the novel upon which the movie is based, this point is made explicitly clear). There is also an abundance of ambiguous sexuality going on. Almost every male character is at some point implied to be gay or at least bisexual. It’s an odd touch but one that creates an undercurrent that colors how viewers interpret the film.

The cinematography enhances the film even further: drab utilitarian structures that make up the scenery all set against the stark snow and ice backdrop plus the alternating sun-bleached and purple midnight skies, all of it creates a sort of sensory deprivation for the viewer. Taken altogether, it's unlike any horror film I've ever seen. I'm not sure that's even the proper designation.

Much to my chagrin, an American remake is in the works. I can only imagine that they'll butcher the film, removing some of the more subversive elements to make it more palatable for American audiences. Do yourself a favor and just rent the DVD. Also respect the actors: watch it with the subtitles.