A Not-At-All Academic Comparision of Let the Right One In and Twilight

Fig.1: Frodo of the Shire checks out Arwen Evenstar’s Elven tush (I think he’s on a footstool)

When it comes to horror, I’ve always been all about the zombies. Until recently, my list of favorite horror movies was probably interchangeable with my list of favorite zombie movies: Dead Alive, Dawn of the Dead (the original, although it pained me to admit that the remake was actually pretty serviceable, despite the aerial shot of “Milwaukee” with all the in-ground pools), and 28 Days Later all take some piece of the zombie mythos and make it special for me, especially Dawn and 28 Days, both of which use zombies as a mirror of humanity in some respect (which is what the best horror and sci-fi movies do). And then of course there’s Shaun of the Dead, which somehow manages to do the same while being hilarious.

But in 2008, it was all about vampires. It started with the HBO series True Blood, which I will now summarize for you (because I watched every ridiculously-entertaining-despite-itself episode) in twelve words: Sookie Sookie fuck Sookie, fuck fuck, Jason’s dick, blood tits fuck Sookie.

Fig.2: Compare with the Shire photo and tell me which movie you’d rather watch?

But the hell with the adult vamps; 2008 was all about immortal bloodsuckers trapped in the bodies of teens and pre-teens. In Sweden, this meant the release of Let the Right One In, a beautifully understated horror drama about the relationship between two painfully lonely 12-year-olds, Oskar and Eli, one of which has been twelve for a long, long time. In America (because 200+ years later, America is still the equivalent of Europe if its mother fed it crack in the womb), this meant the premiere of Twilight, a romantic comedy about a constipated teen vampire named Edward Cullen who falls in love with Bella, the new girl in his chemistry class, simply because she makes him jizz in his pants upon first sight (according to animated gifs on the internet, anyway). Also, vampires take chemistry class, because that’ll come in handy on that college application so you can go to school and WAIT YOU DON’T NEED TO OPERATE IN EVERYDAY SOCIETY BECAUSE YOU’RE A GODDAMN VAMPIRE.

It’s probably unfair to compare the two—heck, Twilight author Stephenie Meyer admits she didn’t even know that much about vampire mythology when she wrote the damn thing (then again, all the more reason to take her to task, eh?)—but plenty of reviewers took that path already, lazily mentioning both movies in the same breath even though the age of the principal characters is about all the movies have in common with each other. And heck, since when has Cultural Zero been about fairness? Having already seen Right One multiple times (and yes, I’m aware of the controversy involving the DVD’s subtitles, so everyone can stop sending me links already, Jeebus), some friends and I popped in Twilight last weekend and watched both films back-to-back. As expected, comparing the two was like comparing delicious chocolate pudding with something that comes out of my cat when he’s sick.

Just about everything that can be said about the differences between these two movies can be summed up by comparing each film’s take on the vampire mythos. Observe:

Gimme Blood: Twilight follows in the path of another, superior teenage vampire series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which allows vamps to drink animal blood if they want to be “good guys” and not dine on humans. “We consider ourselves vegetarians,” Edward says—which doesn’t make very much sense, because then what counts as vampire veganism? Swearing off monkeys? Really rare steaks? None of that foolishness infiltrates Right One; Eli needs human blood, and if she doesn’t have her human blood she stops showering, or something else that makes her look greasy and gross, and starts to stink like a corpse. Which she is. Because she’s a vampire and that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Let the Sun Shine In: For a cut-and-dry demonstration of Right One’s superiority over the sillyass Twilight, look no farther than the sun. In Right One, Eli’s caretaker Hakan boards up their windows as soon as they arrive in Oskar’s building, and he never sees Eli during the daytime. When Eli infects local barfly Virginia, we see why:

Fig.3: This is how a vampire sparkles, goddammit

What happens to Twilight vamps in the sunlight? They sparkle. Because Edward Cullen is the most beautiful boy in the history of beautiful boys and like OMG, how could he be any more pretty? Oooh, oooh—if he SPARKLED IN THE GOD DAMN SUNLIGHT! The movie tries to pass this off as some sort of curse—Edward gets all pissy when he shows Bella his sparkly Ziggy Stardust chest, saying “this is the skin of a killer, lol,” but come the fuck on. Oh, what a cursed existence you live, Edward Cullen—you’ll never grow old, you have superpowers, and you can run around in the daylight shining like a pretty pretty princess. Woe! Woe unto your “curse!”

Fig.4: “I’m a killer.” “I don’t believe that.” Uh…why?? His skin looks like it was mined by 7-year-old African slave children, ffs

Hell, even Cassidy, the vampire in landmark DC Vertigo comic Preacher, who couldn’t be killed by wooden stakes or holy water, still roasted in the sunshine. Because in some ways, being a vampire is supposed to really suck (no pun intended, LOL!). When Bella asks Edward to turn her into a vampire at the end of the movie, he refuses, ostensibly because he doesn’t want to condemn her to a life of, I dunno, being fucking unstoppable. What a dick. Seriously, can someone explain to me why anyone wouldn’t want to be a vampire in the Twilight universe? It sounds like a pretty sweet gig.

That Whole Invite Thing: One of the more intriguing peculiarities about the vampire myth has always been the whole “can’t enter unless invited” thing. This is explored in depth in one of the best scenes of Right One, where Oskar, now aware of Eli’s vampiric nature, forces her to enter his apartment without a spoken invitation. The result is genuinely disturbing and one of the most badass images in the entire film:

Fig.5: Hey Oskar, why don’t you just ask her to fall on some pointy wood if you’re so curious?

The Whole Invite Thing doesn’t even come into play in Twilight, because without an invite, Edward wouldn’t have been able to break into Bella’s bedroom every night for months to watch her sleep. Uh…look, I’ll be the first to cop to being a 34-year-old male—just about the farthest thing from a giggly teenage girl there is. But! I had two giggly teenage girls as sisters, and while one of them actually dreamed about being swept away by, I dunno, some rich Irish aristocrat who would marry her and care for her every need and let her be, I dunno, a baby factory or an object for him to put on a pedestal in his castle and show off to his rich pals, I don’t effing know—even my kid sister, all 14 years old and pumped full of Prince Charming anachronisms, would have thought a dude breaking into our house to watch her sleep was nothing less than insanely creepy.

(An aside to our little comparison: moms, if you care even the slightest iota about your daughters, I do hope you have a good long talk after letting them watch Twilight, because this movie’s sending some seriously frakked messages about what constitutes “romantic.” Remember, love means never having to file an injunction. Sure, vampires can’t be stopped by restraining orders, but 500 yards is a pretty safe distance from most human douchebags.)

Now, none of this is to imply that the relationship between Oskar and Eli in Right One is all sunshine and perfection and rainbow-farting unicorns. On the contrary—while in my opinion it’s a genuine romance and they really do love each other, their love is born out of desperate loneliness and manipulative codependency. Which, I suppose, makes their romance more realistic and believable than the Bella/Edward “I just looked at you and knew you were the one” Disneyland bullshit of Twilight. Which, I suppose, is why Twilight in the end will remain the more popular of the two films (even with a sure-to-be-awful American remake of Right One in the works, god dammit anyway). Who wants to be reminded that love in the real world is messy, complicated, and not always born out of pure intentions? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier if two kids could just lock eyes in chemistry class, throw up a little in their mouths, and know (and, of course, wait until marriage, because the author is a crazy abstinence-only Mormon with magic underwear)? OMG, swoon.

“Vamps Vs. Lolvamps: A Not-At-All Academic Comparision of Let the Right One In and Twilight” was brought to you by Police Teeth’s Real Size Monster Series, The Karl Hendricks Trio’s A Gesture of Kindness, Karp’s Action Chemistry, and what the hell, Metallica’s Death Magnetic, because sometimes the difference between an ok record and a good one is 20 years of reduced expectations.