This film was under the radar a bit. It stars Kodi Smit-McPhee as Owen, a bullied 12-year-old who lives alone with his mother in an apartment in New Mexico, and Chloe Moretz as Abby, Owen's new neighbor who is also a 12-year-old--except she is a vampire. Owen befriends Abby in this movie, set in the 1980s, and learns about her little by little.
This movie was brilliant. It wasn't really scary. It had some scary scenes, but it was more of a drama. The film takes the genre of horror movies, filled with cheap budgets and bad acting and writing, and takes it into a world of passion, feeling, and mystery. It moves a little slowly but keeps you enthralled the entire time. This movie had the feel of The Lost Boys but with a little more heart and drama. It plays on a couple of twists that are geniusly placed. Rarely does a film work with the two leads being children, but this movie is an exception--Moretz and Smit-McPhee are both very convincing and have a great chemistry with each other. Richard Jenkins has a small role in this film as well (I love Richard Jenkins).
Movies from 20-plus years ago tend to move more slowly than modern films, and it worked for them. Slow films nowadays don't get too many fans because they are usually PAINFULLY slow. However, this movie takes the pace that worked for so many films of years ago and makes it fit right in with this modern-day film without involving any pain whatsoever.
The only thing I was confused about, though, is that it seemed as if there was a religious theme to it the whole way through, but then no conclusion as to where that went. Maybe I read into it too much and it was just supposed to be small thoughts here and there.
There's no wonder why Stephen King says that this is the best horror film of the past 20 years. Go see it!
Overall Grade: A
-Ethan Brehm
No comments:
Post a Comment