On the Couch

I hate kids. Can’t stand them. They’re noisy, messy, silver-streak snot-nose little wretches and the world is far too full of them.

The only thing worse than kids is creepy vampire kids. All the same stuff is wrong with them but they’re creepy, they don’t age and they drink your blood.
I bet they get Fanta stains on the remote control too. Fanta if you’re lucky.
Let the Right One In is chock full of creepy kids. Creepy, Swedish, 80s kids. It should be a recipe for a hate sandwich but is, instead, the primary ingredient in an extremely unnerving horror flick.
Twelve-year-old Oskar is a quiet kid living with his mother in a quiet Stockholm suburb in 1982. Bullied at school and apt to spend his time alone keeping a scrapbook of murder articles that appear in the papers or playing with his Rubicks Cube, he is befriended by Eli, a new girl who moves into his apartment block.
An awkward friendship develops between the two as it is revealed that Eli is a vampire and her “grandad” – the auld fella she lives with – is actually a minion who goes out, kills and drains the blood of his victory.
So is Oskar a delicious tidbit Eli is merely toying with before dinner or are the two really becoming friends?
What could descend into a fish-out-of-water romance or, worse a Twilight-style irritation-fest is saved both by the performances of the actors playing Oskar and Eli and the sinister undercurrent that runs through the story. The tension drawn from Eli’s murderous tendancies is agonising at times but, as the film wears on, the glacial pace does start to wear upon the patience.
Parents and adults are barely present in the world of LtROI and the ones that are are ineffectual or pathetic. Oskar and Eli’s sense of isolation is profound and frightening. Not that the only scares are of the psychological kind. The sight of Eli scuttling after her prey is queasy-making in the way that Regan descending the stairs in The Exorcist was.
LtROI stands with Frostbite as another excellent Swedish addition to the world of vampire movies.
Scott Pilgrim vs the World is going to last forever on DVD. Forever and ever and ever.
While it may have been the darling of a very select band of (mostly) geeky film critics, the cinema crowds, they did not come a runnin’. Allowing its audience the opportunity to pause, rewind and indulge in the many, many layers of amusement that director Edgar Wright has layered on the comic book base of Bryan Lee O’Malley is what will make this a hit that could, and should, become a cult success of Rocky Horror Picture Show proportions.
A hyperactive tale of post-teen hipsters sees Michael Cera star as the titular Scott, bassist for indy rockers Sex Bob-omb and recently smitten suitor of the mysterious and beautiful Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead).
What should be a fine, if somewhat mundane slacker romance, is enlivened because in order to pursue his relationship with Flowers, he must defeat her seven evil exes in mortal combat.
If that wasn’t enough to keep him busy, he also needs to find the time to get over his last girlfriend, break up with his current one, ‘Knives’ Chau and win a battle of the bands.
Packed with comic book references and computer game sound effects and graphics – vanquished evil exes dissolve into a shower of gold coins à la Super Mario – there is nothing to take seriously in Scott Pilgrim but plenty to enjoy and laugh out loud at.
While it won’t be to everyone’s taste the giddy pace and clever mixture of slapstick humour, musical interludes and oneliners is hard to resist. Top that with a cute little love story and there’s fun for all the (geeky) family.
In what can only be a tired restatement of the fact – Michael Cera is great to watch. He’s far from the sole star in the show, however, with entertaining performances from the top of the bill down, especially the seven evil exes who steal most of the scenes they’re in.
The failure of this film to become a beloved classic will be final proof of the lack of existance of a higher power.