I Watched a Scary Movie!

Admittedly, saying "I watched a scary movie" is equivalent to me bragging about eating spicy food. When I define something as "spicy", that usually means it had an extra dash of pepper and when I watch a "scary" movie, it is generally more of a thriller. Much like you won't catch me eating Sichuan anything, you will also never see me watching Saw (or any of its spawn). My favorite scary movies (I can't even legitimately call them "horror") are Sleepy Hollow and...well, that's about it.

I have always been this way. As a child I had to be taken out of the movie theater during Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (the Disney version). I was an adult before I had the guts to watch The Princess Bride the whole way through. That may sound strange, but when I went to see it on the big screen in 1987, the pain machine scared the hell out of me and I had not yet perfected my eyelash trick (to be described in the next paragraph). I pictured it as a kind of Iron Maiden that pierced Wesley and flattened him like a pancake. It was horrific.

Even with Sleepy Hollow I watched most of it through my eyelashes. You see, I squint to the point where my vision blurs and my eyelashes cover about 50% of the screen. I want to know what is going on, but I don't actually want to SEE it. Also, peeking through your fingers is totally lame. So that's how I've watched The Blaire Witch Project, The Sixth Sense, and the majority of Sin City (I realize the last one isn't technically a scary movie, but it is pretty gross).

The scary movie I watched recently was Let the Right One In, a Swedish film about a bullied boy who befriends a strange girl who moves into his apartment complex. Turns out, she's a vampire. It was mostly just mildly creepy with a soupcon of graphic violence. I had heard it was good and an American version will be coming out in October called Let Me In. I figured that if I can handle the Swedes, I will probably be able to watch the Americanized movie (at least through my lashes). But I knew that if I couldn't make it through the original, I would never be able to sit through the inevitably more intense remake.

Let the Right One In is available to watch instantly on Netflix and I definitely recommend it if you are into the latest vampire craze. In this story, the author (and screenwriter) harkened back to older vampire mythology eschewing the glamorization and sexing up of vampires found in True Blood and ensuring that the undead do not glitter in the sun (they spontaneously and spectacularly combust). This is definitely more Brahm Stoker than Charlaine Harris.

At its core, it is a story of friendship and trust in an unfriendly and uncaring world. My favorite part is when the boy asks the girl to "go steady" their dialogue is very sweet and honest. Also not to be missed is the pool scene at the very end. I hope you like it as much as I did.