Claudia can suck it

I'm not a fan of horror movies.  I'm not.  I can't think of a single horror film in the past ten years that has truly scared me, or caused me to lose sleep.  I'm thinking...uh...no, sorry, I got nothing.  

The people that populate these movies are usually so stupid, that I end up hoping that they'll just go ahead and lose their kidney, or their head sooner rather then later.

On the other hand, some of my favorite books were written by Stephen King and Anne Rice.  When it comes down to it, how can a film compete with your own imagination?  A good book can stir the pot just enough to let me go running off in my own head until I am afraid to look out the window for fear of seeing little Danny Glick floating outside.  "I'm cold, let me come in."  After reading Salem's Lot, I slept with the covers over my head for a week.  Okay, a month.  

If you haven't read Interview With The Vampire, you're missing something truly brilliant.  Not designed to haunt you in the typical way, it brings up philosophical questions about our own existence.  Morality, mortality, loneliness, self-loathing, carnal desire, intellectual desire...and for Rice, a child that could not die.  After losing her own daughter to leukemia at the age of five, Rice created Claudia, the child vampire.  Claudia, a mere six years old when she is "made", never grows up....physically.  Imagine being sixty years old and trapped in the body of a six year old.  That is where Rice takes us.  Into our imagination, our own loneliness and feelings of isolation amongst the many.  We sympathize with her vampires...and we feel their pain, as ours.

In the movie, on the other hand, we get, whiney, bratty Claudia, whiney morose Louis and what the hell can you say about Tom Cruise's Lestat?  Whiney asshole Lestat? Just, read the book.

Anyhoo, I have already let my feelings about Twilight be known.  This upcoming vampire flick is poised to become a megahit of Harry Potter proportions.  So, while I'm at home popping up a bag of Newman's Own and watching reruns of Dexter, go see it if you must.  

But, I ask everyone to consider seeing the real winner in the horror sweeps this year.  A small swedish film called Let the Right One In.  A coming of age story, Right One uses the vampire myth as metaphor.  Once again, the child vampire is a little girl.  This one, you want on your team.  And then, there's that nagging question, would you like her anyway?

Watch the trailer here, and tell me what you think!

TRAILER  - LET THE RIGHT ONE IN - opens October 24