Let the Right One In

The premise of this movie is quiet interesting. It follows a 12 year old boy coming of age when a kid-killer is on the loose. Of course time goes on and people must combat their everyday struggles that face them; for the kid this is courage to stand up for himself. When he meets Eli he is intrigued by her and she tells him to stand up for himself. Only after brutally mutilating the bullies ear does he feel great for what he has done. Eli is proud. Oscar finds out she is a vampire and must kill for blood. She senses that Eli wants to kill too but for revenge, all the wrong reasons. The story concludes when Oscar is confronted by a friend of the bully, possibly brother or relative, and he threatens to pay for what he has done with Oscars life. While he is practically drowning him Eli comes back and helps him win the unwin-able battle.

I feel that I have seen this movie many times before. It seems to follow a standard story-line of the underdog story of a protagonist who can't seem to get with society. My explanation is vague of course but this seems to be the criteria of a underdog story. As for the vampuric aspects, there are two stories going on, the murders from the vampires and the murders that Oscar is following of the kids his age. It is also ironic that the bully he stands up to is related in some way to the murderer of the kids; making him a direct target. I feel this is almost a required storyline for a movie like this, the protagonist must have confrontation with what he is tracking but the way they connected him with the murderer, defending himself from a bully, was quiet fascinating. You can see just how small of a town this place actually is.

The movie is a recent film, in 2008, and has a completely different take on vampires than I've seen so far. Today's vampires arn't Pennsylvanian nor bat-like, but more of everyday people that live among us. Eli shares this quality of living among average people but she, and her father, live in fear of the curse that they have. That they will hurt the people around them. I think this movie was reflecting on the fear of humans living among cursed or demon-like people, that anyone can live among them that can bring them down into a personal hell. The fear of murderers, on any sense, is large among my age groups so this is understandable why the director chose vampires as the conscious entity to live among society. Otherwise Eli and her father would be not accepted by the audience if they were just murderers that liked to drink blood! Haha

Night of the Living Dead

The ending came as a shock to me. Even after all the turmoil and torchure of seeing everyone die around him he finds a way to live. Surviving the night wasn't enough. How can you tell a savior that you are not a zombie? This was the ultimate downfall of man, he is in haste. I am proud of the producer though that he never once had the word "zombie" appear in the script of the movie. This movie is the original zombie movie, people don't have an idea of what zombies are in this time which built up a lot of suspense for the cast as well as the audience. I can imagine seeing this movie in theaters for the first time and imagining 'what the heck is going on?!' and was able to appreciate the vision of the director. With that said zombie movies today are different. The cast tends to know what zombies are from the culture they live in; it's as if you or me were to be attacked by zombies, we would figure it out pretty darn fast. This does take away from certain zombie movies and the director must find new ways to keep me entertained.

I want to comment on a few things I noticed in the movie, one of which being an incorrect discrepancy. The movie takes place in america, at night. The young lady even mentions "its 10 till three" giving us an exact frame of time reference. Although when they watch the television set the government officials, the same one that shoots the protagonist at the end, is in broad daylight. He even comments about 'working for the rest of the day and well into the night' giving us an even stronger hint that he is somewhere where it is daytime. This clearly doesn't match up.

I did notice however that many movies in today pay homage to George Romero by remaking certain shots in their adaption of their zombie movie. The turning of a protagonist against it's own, a survivor being ripped apart in the sea of zombies and even seeking shelter in the cellar of a building are all take-by-take remakes in today's films. Romero came up with the original idea that was so well thought out that you can see the fan-boys of today using these clips from what I speculate as 'reliving the fear as they once did'.

Frankenstein

Growing up watching TV and hearing other people talk about Frankenstein during halloween has given me a false impression. I always thought that Frankenstein was the monster and that the entirety of the story of Frankenstein was of creating him and bringing him to life. I was too young to understand that the story of the monster is a long one and that bringing him to life is really just the beginning.

The story itself is a sad tale of a soul who is born without any identity, forced to roam the world alone in search of human companion. The monster sees how humans interact with each other and attempts to interact with them himself, but every time is rejected by mankind. These initial acts of humans has already begun to form his identity. He grows fearful of humans through his own physical appearance. Which in turn forced himself to hide from society. While reading that he was able to go into hiding for a year you would think that he would develop more of a healthy identity for himself while he learns the language and how people interact. Although this was not the case; He was at no fault for trying to fit in but society wouldn't let him. I honestly felt sorry for the monster and did take his side from here on out in the story. Even though he kills Frankenstein's son and frames his wife it was Frankenstein alone who was in the fault for abandoning a 'child'.

Frankenstein's monster is essentially a kid that lost his way, a kid that couldn't make peace with trying to fit in and find a different calling in life (animals, art, nature, ect) because of the hole in his life; love. Unconditional love from his parent would have made the difference of everything in the monster's life. Perhaps even Frankenstein could have introduced him into society slowly through the proxy of an understanding human. The only issue with that was that Frankenstein was not understanding and fled from his own creation. Frankenstein's monster was a monster created out of neglect not test tubes.

Little Frankenstein

There are several elements in a movie that make up the horror genre. Many different elements at play. These things really just set the scene for a horror movie. Things such as:

• stormy nights
• odd music
• escalating music preceding important events
• yelling
• flashes of light
• digital (or in the case of film) tearing and glitching (mistakes on film real)
• blood or body parts
• still things coming to life (jumping out)
• torchure
• slight comic relief
• perfect family
• revenge
• dead still being alive / coming alive
• unnatural communication with dead
• mind control
• voodoo
• weird unknown magic (compared to normal magic? lol)
• a creepy guy that is a part of the main case that is suspicious
  
• youthful people
• weird haircuts
• eccentric personalities

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

• her mother died within a couple days of giving birth
• Prego five times, almost miscarried in her fifth pregnancy.
• Raised in a literary household
• She's 18, 19 years old and hormonally all off the wall. This summer there is a weird volcano eruption that covered the sun and rained endlessly the entire time. It is in this time that she decides to right these kinds of gothic stories. This is how the novel "Frankenstein" is born.