Send in the (Dead) Clowns

When asked to name my favorite zombies on film, I usually don’t have to think hard (useful because I’m asked this question every time I go to the post office). To toss out a few:

-the ballerina zombie in Day of the Dead

-Fido

-the Hari Krishna in Dawn of the Dead

-the clown in Zombieland

-the clown in Land of the Dead

-the clown in Day of the Dead

and you’ve noticed the pattern! Like most human beings with any sense of what’s right and wrong, I have a minor case of coulrophobia. Typically, this enhances certain movie watching experiences, making the stangulation in Poltergeist all the more horrifying or the titular Killer Klowns From Outer Space strangely scary, despite also being ridiculous (and awesome).

Hence, when I spot a title like “Dead Clowns”, there’s really no possible reason I’m NOT going to watch it.

Quick Plot: Hurricane Jacob is heading into Port Emmet with a vengeance as the soft-spoken townspeople prepare their homes for torrential rain and high speed winds. Such a storm hasn’t been seen since 50 years earlier, when poor weather conditions and a drunk driver caused a passing circus to plummet into the sea. Most of the casualties were clowns, which of course, is pretty fabulous (I mean tragic, right, tragic).

This story is relayed twice, which is vital in making up about 80% of the dialogue in the entire film. Dead Clowns, a microbudgeted release that found its way into Lions Gate’s apparently large clown wing (as witnessed by the trailers on this DVD, three of which were for similarly themed films), isn’t an awful movie by any means. Sure, it’s clearly saving its pennies in just about every scene, but at the same time, the gore is decent, acting...passable, and dialogue not painful...mostly because there’s so little of it.

See, nothing really happens to anybody worth knowing in Dead Clowns. Seriously. The most interesting person onscreen is scream queen Brinke Stevens, whose richly deep voice sets up almost eerie possibilities. 

Unfortunately, she meets her blurry end far too early, leaving us with a random assortment of shy soon-to-be victims, including a dude in a wheelchair with no discernible personality outside of being in a wheelchair, a busty blond with no discernible personality outside of being busty and blond, a pair of goth kid murderers whose bark is worse than their bite, and in a true cinematic crime, a wasted Debbie Rochon who sports an unflattering Christmas sweater and spends the entire film hiding and saying absolutely nothing. NOTHING! Maybe the lovely Ms. Rochon had strep throat during the week of filming. 

High Points

Putting aside a few of the overused songs, Steven Sessions’ instrumental score is quite good, filled with clever circus homages at just the right time (including a clown-getting-into-the-canon worthy drumroll played as a character fights a knife slowly heading towards her eyeball)

Low Points

95 minutes isn’t a long running time for most films, but considering Dead Clowns has no actual story or protagonist and about 25 minutes are spread out footage of hurricane winds hitting palm trees, there really wasn’t much to keep us driving towards the anticlimactic finale

A lesson to all filmmakers from someone who used to play with a camera as a teenager: slowly zooming in for an extreme closeup during an intense monologue will make it seem as though you’re a teenager that plays with a camera

Lessons Learned

If you’re in a horror movie situation, just throw out your cell phone. Seriously, have you ever seen it actually help anyone?

Being buried at sea for thirty years will do nothing to fade the brightness of your primary colored pants and hair

Just because the lights don’t work doesn’t mean you won’t get fuzzy reception on your television set

It’s so effin awesome to comb brains out of your hair

Rent/Bury/Buy

There are few people who I would recommend Dead Clowns to, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t recommend it. The zombies have a slightly Fulci-esque look that’s executed with skill, something that automatically makes Dead Clowns better than a good deal of the straight-to-DVD undead cinema lurking in your Netflix queue. The film has a ridiculous amount of problems and shouldn’t be shown to those with budgetary standards, but hey, I’ve seen worse, and when you add up the intrigue of Sessions’ score, Stevens' voice, and the basic neatness of zombie clowns, someone like me isn’t too disappointed. 

T.L. Bugg's Choice: A Different Kind of Audrey II

Following last month’s movie swap of Dolls for Skinned Deep, it seems Mr. T.L. Bugg decided to class up this joint with a film that has credentials. Directed by Robert Wise (the man responsible for The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Haunting, plus editing some film people always talk about called Citizen Kane) and starring Anthony Hopkins (best known, of course, for his riveting turn in Magic) and Marsha Mason, Aubrey Rose is a 1977 thriller(ish) that’s been sitting snugly on my queue for quite some time.

And thus, while I delve into the ‘70s, I’ve ordered my blogging buddy to watch a nostalgic favorite of mine, 1986’s From a Whisper to a Scream (aka The Offspring), an odd horror anthology that dips into all things great: American history, sideshow freaks, fountain of youths and necrophilia. Head over www.thelightningbugslair.com after a message from our favorite reincarnated two-named girl.

Quick Plot: When her mother’s car flips over, young Audrey Rose is trapped inside as it explodes, not before she pounds on the glass window and calls for her daddy through smoke-filled lungs. 

Fast forward eleven years later, where the wealthy Janice and Bill Templeton live on the upper west side of Manhattan with their almost-11 year old daughter, Ivy. The parents start to notice a mysterious man following them, a mystery that gets even more mysterious when he reveals himself to be Elliot Hoover (Hopkins), father of the late Audrey Rose and firm believer in reincarnation. He claims his late daughter was reborn into Ivy, a phenomena that may explain why Ivy gets increasingly intense nightmares around her birthday.

Of course, it sounds like phooey to the yuppie Templetons, who return home to their daughter screaming in a dazed sleep, her hands seeming to self-burn on cold windows. Only the voice of Hoover, calling out the name Audrey Rose can calm her terror. Bill is furious, both at Hoover’s nerve and his own inability to help his little girl, while Janice is torn between what she’s witnessed and what her logic dictates as impossible. 

Through a series of events, Audrey Rose shifts to an awkward courtroom drama second act. What begins as a kidnapping case turns into a citywide law crusade to prove the legitimacy of reincarnation. It’s an odd turn that certainly distinguishes the film as NOT being The Changeling, but it also starts to move us a little too far from the actual subject.

And there, perhaps, is my biggest issue with Audrey Rose. It’s an effective, extremely well acted and shot film, but it never seems to really deal with its central question: Who is Ivy/Audrey Rose? If, as the film seems to purport, reincarnation happens to most souls and as we know, a good deal of deaths are painful and occur to incomplete lives, what about all the others? And how would a family actually deal with a child that has remnants of a past identity? What does it mean to be the dead daughter of a sad but peaceful man while still being the happy little girl of two everyday parents?

Audrey Rose doesn’t really answer these questions, though it does offer some chilling development as Ivy continues to suffer from the memories of her previous life. An infamous hypnosis scene is extremely suspenseful, and the fact that it involves a likable 11 year old certainly helps. As a drama with thriller elements, Audrey Rose works fairly well, but perhaps because of its reincarnation agenda, it never quite jumps into the audience’s psyche.

High Points

As Ivy, the young Susan Swift is pretty terrific, skillfully jumping between happy fifth grader and haunted fire soul with ease

Low Points

...which makes it even more of a shame that her character is never really explored

Lessons Learned

A fibber and a liar are not the same thing

If your daughter is having violent night terrors, perhaps you shouldn’t send her off to boarding school

Bad things only happened to rich people in the 1970s

Rent/Bury/Buy

Audrey Rose is far less a horror film than I expected it to be, but it’s still an unnerving and quite well made thriller of its time. Though it doesn’t quite reach the levels of The Changeling or Rosemary’s Baby, it’s worth a lights-off watch when you feel like something serious. Yes, it suffers from the usual bad '70s haircuts and slow pacing, so if that doesn't work for you, I'm not going to force it. Still, it's an intriguingly odd little film that will make you ponder some worldly possibilities.

Lady In Reeeeeeeeed-I mean white. Lady In White. Right.

Savvy readers know of my fondness for the bizarre 1980 antichrist-goes-to-high-school classic Fear No Evil, a film that featured everything from death by dodgeball, passion plays, zombies, Rocky Horror Show costuming, angels, and suicide inspired by the sudden development of female breasts on a male bully chest. Naturally, the mere fact that writer/director Frank LaLoggia had also made 1988’s Lady In White eventually sent it to the top of the queue.

Quick Plot: A friendly cab driver lets young Frankie out at a cemetery, then follows him to hear the story of a few buried folk. That’s right folks, a smoother device for narration there has never been.

Frankie (now young, big-eyed, and played by Lucas Haas) takes us back to 1962, when he was a 9-year-old writer-in-the-making living with his widowed father, big brother, and adorably Italian grandparents. One Halloween night, a pair of pricky bullies play a typical wacky movie prank by locking Frankie inside school, an old building that happens to overlook a cemetery. While inside, Frankie sees the ghost of a little girl reenacting her murder just before the actual murderer enters and nearly strangles the boy. Mystery hath been laid.

This being 1962, the police arrest the nearest black man and pin eleven more child murders on the poor family guy, much to the catharsis of the town. Frankie’s father, however, knows the pieces don’t fit together, though the story gets passed back down to Frankie to figure things out for himself. About 2 hours later, he does.

Lady In White is one of the most baffling movies I’ve seen in a very long time, mostly because I have absolutely no idea who its intended audience could be. Rated PG13 (probably PG in ’88), it steers clear of any sex or serious onscreen violence, though the very nature of the killer (notes are dropped about molestation) isn’t quite appropriate for kids to consider. At the same time, the film tries to show the world from Frankie’s 9-year-old point of view, straight down to LaLoggia’s instrumental score that seems intent on lightening the mood at every moment of suspense. 

So a ghost story for 12 year olds? Except not. Unless your 12 year old has an incredibly  advanced attention span, there’s no way he or she will eagerly sit through a full two hour (!) film filled with limp subplots and stretched out scenes of dialogue. Making a deeper-than-your-average-thriller is admirable, but that doesn’t mean your script is comparable to To Kill a Mockingbird.

And yet I liked this movie and rather enjoyed the offbeat tone. It's neat. Just too long. 

High Points

A Bing Crosby ditty called Did You Ever See a Dream Walking? is used throughout the film with surprising creepiness

Low Points

Netflix reports the running length as 1 hour and 58 minutes. Even if the film didn't contain a whole lot of slow scenes, that's simply too long for a skim ghost story

All in all, the narration and framing device does about nothing for Lady In White

The always fabulous Katherine Helmond is always fabulous, but also, rather wasted in a quick two-scene role that, by the time we get to 90+ minutes into the film, barely registers

Lessons Learned

A thinking tree helps you think about things

A game of limbo is a great way to see up your teacher’s skirt

In the 1960s, women were listed in the phone book under their first names

Rent/Bury/Buy
I'm extremely torn on how to rate this film because though it has a lot about it to enjoy, Lady In White is also far too long and rather confused about who it's been made for. Those who like nostalgic kid movies spiced up with mild horror (think Matinee) may take to the style, but viewers expecting actual horror won't find too much more than Disney-esque ghost effects. The DVD includes a commentary by the always affable LaLoggia, but overall, this is a rental for those looking for something different. If you do, however, dig into The Lady In White, come back here to share your thoughts. I'm especially curious to hear who else correctly identified the murderer within two minutes of his screentime (only to then wait ONE HOUR AND FIFTY EIGHT MINUTES for the reveal).

Would you like some fries with your face?

So within the first five minutes of Drive Thru, we get to watch a jumpsuit wearing clown butcher two urban talking white boys that spew out every possible stereotype of ghetto speak (holmes, dog, busta cap in yo ass, etc.) before dying wonderfully exciting painful deaths (face fries and all). Naturally, I’m instantly convinced Drive Thru is the best piece of cinema ever to include a cameo by Morgan Spurlock and Sean "Aawon Buhh" Whalen. Screw that, the best piece of cinema ever made by mankind.

Quick Plot: In the quiet, wonderfully named town Blanca Carne, a hip hopping van of weed smoking teens orders some artery clogging dinner from Hella Burger, a greasy fast food chain best known for its popular Horny the Clown mascot. I never understood how such an ambitious venture like McDonald’s could succeed despite 30% of the greater population being absolutely terrified by the face that graces every Happy Meal, but apparently, I’m just not that smart.

Anyway, our stoners don’t make it to their milkshakes because Horny, accompanied by some intensely annoying metal music, slices or fries them up while making excruciatingly awesome puns. Meanwhile, high school senior McKenzie (Gossip Girl’s Leighton Meester) is partying with her friends (including another Gossip Girl actor, Penn Badgley, in a glorious curly afro) and playing with a Ouja board in the hopes of contacting Marilyn Manson. Instead, they receive a mysterious bunch of letters and numbers that later proves itself to be the license plate of the ill-fated diners.

Before you can say ‘xoxo,’ McKenzie is receiving all sorts of ominous warnings through her retro toys, including a Magic 8 ball and Etch-a-Sketch. Like a straighter haired Nancy Thompson wearing eye liner that would give Blair Waldorf hives, McKenzie pieces together a mystery involving her former hippie mom (Jan from The Office) and a typical prank gone wrong from many years ago.

If there’s a fatal flaw to Drive Thru, it’s that the film overplays its hand during its incredibly American cheesy opening. The ridiculous joy shown in those first five minutes just can't quite be matched once the (sigh) story kicks in, even if it means we get Blair Waldorf singing rock ‘n roll and calling the preppy Bush supporters Banana Republicans. In fact, Drive-Thru kind of has an insane case of identity crisis all the way through, selling itself as urban horror but primarily focusing on rich white people. Even Horny himself makes the Leprechaun look like the little guy belongs in the hood. It's strange.

But also, simply great. Great. Great. And kind of okay. 

   

And great.

High Points

Kudos to a movie that finds a more realistic way to show a microwaved head than Last House On the Left, providing one could poke a hole in the bottom of a microwave, stick someone's head through it, and make it explode. That's how it works right?

Low Points

Obviously, the soundtrack wasn’t going to go on my iPod, but that doesn’t mean it has to be played at 10 decibels louder than the rest of the film

Buddhist Question of the Month

Does the pope shit in the woods?

No seriously, does he? When using this expression, is it rhetorical in the affirmative or negative? I. Don't. Know.

Lessons Learned

It takes about 10 seconds to realize that your body has been severed in two

Taking a secret to the grave is a great way to guarantee your presence in a horror movie

Psycho killers usually keep shit in the garage

All you can really hope to get out of fancy college is a designer drug addiction or stalker

Today’s youth are quite retro, using dark rooms to develop photographs and making hip references to Greg Brady and Captain Kangaroo 

Rent/Bury/Buy

Look, some of us really love these kinds of movies, and God clearly loves such people because Neflix/God puts them on Instant Watch. If logic follows, those of us that adored Drive Thru will enjoy watching such films on fluffy cotton candy clouds up in heaven. I kind of can’t wait for that, even if it means I have to be sliced up by a 7’ tall clown making bad puns in order to get there.

In other words, add to queue, queue up, watch, rate 5 stars, and move on. Your afterlife will be better for it.

Give Me Something Nice to Eat (or my Satan will kill you)

I’m a sucker for anything set during Halloween, be it a Garfield special or Gossip Girl episode. Hence, when I learned a naughty little film directed by Jeff Lieberman (a man with a regular stay in the guest room of this Doll's House) AND that it was on Instant Watch, I blew my nose and hit play.


Quick Plot: Young Dougy is way too excited to go trick-or-treating with his sexy college aged sister Jenna, something their kooky mom (Amanda Plummer, because bless her squeaky heart, the woman can only ever play kooky) finds way too adorable. Plans get complicated when Jenna invites her new boyfriend Alex along the trip.

But what's this? It's Satan of course, and he's more than willing to ensure Dougy gets to date his big sis. See, Dougy's a big fan of a video game called Satan's Little Helper, so when a 6 1/2" tall man in a rubber mask that matches a certain characters shows up in town to "stage" a few murders, Dougy eagerly invites him to beat the candy corn out of Alex. Kids can be so darn darnable.

As you can probably guess, Dougy's big friend isn't (gasp) in costume! Well, maybe he is, since (mild spoiler) we never actually see his face. I'll assume it's grizzled with a kind softness akin to Danny Trejo.


The main issue I had with Satan's Little Helper, a film not without its quirky charm, is just how badly in need of some editing it was. The first 45 mintues or so just linger as Jenna and Mom make a costume, Dougy and Satan have some fun, Jenna tries on her costume, Alex hangs out, Dougy and Satan have more (predictable) fun, Jenna and Alex hang out, and...

you get my drift. Though there are a few genuinely funny bits, Satan's Little Helper is the filmic personification of a loiterer or, more fittingly, a party guest that brings a six pack of your favorite beer, but who then starts to grate on your friends' nerves, clogs the toilet, feeds your dog onions, and naturally, is the very last one to leave.


High Points
I give a lot of credit to actress Katheryn Winnick, a pretty young woman saddled with some truly painful dialogue (including some as a medieval slut wench) and cringe-inducing moments, yet still comes off as likable

As I grow closer to 'adult age' (I'm guessing that's when a tail starts growing?) Halloween parties become quite hit-or-miss events. Though I'll never tire of red punch from a skeleton bowl, it can be worrisome to see certain friends and acquaintances who believe the night is theirs to dress and act in ways that will forever make them seem lesser. Satan's Little Helper gets that

Low Points
On the whole, the picture and sound quality is quite good for such a (what I assume and hope to be) low budget film.  It still would have been nice to have some conversations not muffled through masks


Lessons Learned
Incest isn’t taught in school until after the third grade

You may already have caught this in Toy Story 3, but always keep in mind that red strappy heels are sometimes a dead giveaway to your identity


During martial law, the best thing you can possibly do is raid a costume shop


Rent/Bury/Buy
I'm still amazed by the low number of true Halloween-themed horror films, so for that matter, one could do worse than Satan's Little Helper (Halloween 5=way less fun). This isn't good, but it has much higher production values than many other cheapies riding the Instant Watch wave and does offer a few creative laughs at the expenses of baby strollers, pregnant women, and stupid children. Classier than Troma, but not so classy that it won't try to force you to picture Amanda Plummer dressed up like a Renaissance whore.

HallowStuff

During this Best Month Of the Year, many fine and ambitious bloggers load up on the energy-high-ifying candy corn pumpkins and produce a post a day, which is impressive and near impossible when your fingers are growing as chubby as candy corn pumpkins by eating, well, so many candy corn pumpkins.

Once again, I'm nowhere near organized enough to truly put together a huge October plan, but I'll do my best to attempt to produce Halloween-themed content, be it a review of Satan's Little Helper or an announcement of my costume plans (tick tock, tick tock, tick shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit).

But in between stressful candy corn gorging in the hopes of formulating a Halloween plan, I've been busy elsewhere, namely Rogue Cinema. This month, you can find two new reviews of intriguing short films, including Joel Reid's Death By Death, Tyler Cathey's 5ive,  plus an interview with The Absent's writer/director, Sage Bannick

Head there for a batch of other interesting musings on film criticism, indie flicks, and Grindhouse goodness (and badassness).


Also this week, GleeKast! A new episode featuring Stamos drool, ultimatums, and inappropriate sexual activities in the library. You know you want to dance along, so download and enjoy...bitch.

Oh oh! And remember dear Eastern Americans (or as I like to call, Eastericans), should you be in or anywhere NEAR the Wuh-ster area of Massachusetts next weekend (October 15th-17th) you BEST be stopping by the annual Rock 'N Shock horror convention. Guests include some dude with a ponytail named George, Bill Esprestin Esquire, Ruggero "The Barbarian" Deodato, and more. More importantly, I'll be hanging out all through Saturday and Sunday with GleeKast cohostess Erica, plus a bunch of other supercool Internet people. So really, unless you're a Yankees fan or have some other allergy to New England, we'll see each other soon, yes?

Let Me In (Seriously guys...it's cold out here)

You’ve read the book. You’ve sent angry letters to the Academy Awards blasting them for not nominating the Swedish film in the best foreign category. You’ve ranted on message boards about how Hollywood will rape the material with CGI and CW casting. 

Then you saw an early poster and thought hm, that’s clever. You heard the casting of Chloe Kickass Moretz, Kodi Smit-McI Acted Alongside Viggo Mortenson & Probably Learned a Lot of Great Stuff-Phee, everybody’s favorite undertaker (that’s not David Fisher) Richard Jenkins, and Casey Jones/Not Chris Meloni aka Elias Koteas. Maybe you even read an intelligent interview with writer/director Matt Reeves. Something in you finally kicked: the American remake of Let the Right One In just may be all right.

Quick Plot: An unnamed policeman (Koteas) arrives at a hospital to interview an acid burn victim/murder suspect. Not long after, the disfigured, unnamed man throws himself out the window as we flash back two weeks earlier.

12-year-old Owen is small for his age, an instant outcast with a whisper soft voice and lonely existence. Other than eating Now & Laters, getting beaten up by bullies, and avoiding his wino mother’s macaroni and cheese dinners, he passes most of his time hanging out alone on the playground of his drab Soviet-like New Mexico apartment complex. 

One day, a mysterious man and his ‘daughter’ move in and suddenly Owen is sharing jungle gym space with Abby, the smart and elusive girl next door. “I can’t be your friend,”  she plainly states, though one day later, she’s back at his side to share puzzles and quiet stares.

You’re probably thinking “I KNOW THIS” because you more than likely saw Let the Right One In, one of the best genre films in recent years and forever in a heated battle with Near Dark for most rightfully respected vampire tale yet. Let Me In, it should be said, is very close to Tomas Alfredson’s 2008 adaptation. Yes, Reeves has stated that he wanted to use John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel as inspiration more than anything else, but he’s also an admitted admirer of the Swedish film and occasionally, Let Me In shows it a little too much. Some of the scenic compositions feel so directly influenced that at times, it’s simply distracting.

On the other hand, Reeves certainly does make specific changes to both source materials that ultimately works quite well. In Lindqvist’s novel, Oskar’s father is clearly drawn as an alcoholic and, in perhaps my favorite passage of the book, Oskar compares him to a werewolf to ultimately conclude that Eli’s vampirism really isn’t such a bad thing. Alfredson’s film features this character, but on first viewing, it’s almost too subtle as to what about him drives Oskar away. Let Me In takes more of the Charlie Brown approach. We briefly see his mother (now the clear alcoholic of the group) while his father remains a voice on the phone. Since this is a film about children, it works quite well.

What works best, however, are the performances of Moretz and Smit-McPhee, two wiser-than-their-years child actors who play their roles with such perfect restraint. As Owen, McPhee is like a mouse on a tightrope, so quietly frightened by virtually everything around him until one day, there’s something that can give him strength. Though his Owen never channels quite the same darkness as Alfredson’s version of Oskar, the relationship with Abby remains weirdly wonderful, filled with puppy love and the need for safety.

Let Me In is a fine film, well written, wonderfully acted, and beautifully shot. Is it better than Alfredson’s? I don’t think so, but it stands strong on its own merits. My only real complaint is that, as someone who has read the novel and seen the original film several times, I wish Reeves took a few more chances with bringing his own take to the story and look. Though he does cut out a lot of peripheral characters (mostly Oskar’s middle aged neighbors), the script itself is close to the other film that someone TOO familiar with the material may find themselves constantly trying to spot the differences. The Father’s garbage bag murder uniform will stand out, more because it was new than because it was creepy (though in fairness, it was creepy). 

Perhaps this bothers me more for my love of great adaptations than any devil’s advocate addiction I harness towards defending the idea of remakes (I know, remakes brought me It’s Alive ’09, but they also brought us The Thing and The Fly). I love a film that brings new life to a novel--The Sweet Hereafter, Election, Children of Men, to name a few--and I was truly hoping Reeves would do the same with Lindqvist’s work. He doesn’t, but that doesn’t necessarily spell doom for Let Me In. It just means I’m not quite as pleased as I was hoping to be.

High Points

A car accident is staged with some interesting and effective innovation. We've seen plenty of flipovers, but Reeves puts it in a new perspective (literally) that is both disorienting and weirdly scary

A minor spoiler, in terms of detail:

There’s a rather perfect moment in Abby’s apartment where Owen finds an old sepia photograph of her and what must be a young--probably just a few years older than Owen--version of “The Father.” Nothing needs to be said, but The Father/Abby’s history is instantly written on Owen’s face with what must be fear of his possible future. Those who have already seen Let the Right One In were most likely left with that haunting question of ‘what happens now?’, and this one quick scene spells it out perfectly

Low Points

Although the score (composed by Lost superstar Michael Giacchino) is quite good, the music in general feels overused, playing far too audibly in the background of several understated scenes

Middle Ground

I’m torn on the use of CGI in Abby’s vampiric attacks. On one hand, I love that the sped-up movement made her into a true monster and something animal, but on the other, I always rate CGI on whether or not, as I was watching it, it LOOKED like CGI and you know what? it looked like CGI

Lessons Learned

In the 1980s, Now & Later candy had a super catchy jingle

Cinematic bullies are more than just jerks; they're vengeful sociopaths with less morality than Jeffrey Dahmer, C. Montgomery Burns, or Bugs Bunny

1980s New Mexico looked an awful lot like 1980s Sweden, straight down to the train interiors and sparsely furnished vampire lairs

See/Skip/Sneak In

I recommend Let Me In, providing you can get to a theater not visited by high schoolers or general idiots. It’s a beautiful and occasionally scary film that works well on the big screen, one that lets you jump, listen, cringe, and smile. Is it the unique film treatment I was hoping for? Not really, but that shouldn’t necessarily deter a viewing. You might be fine waiting for the DVD (since lead time on that is now what, 3 weeks? Crazy changing marketplace) but if you’re a multiplex fan, you could certainly do worse than sitting back for some poetic vampire action.