Midnight Son is an Indie Vampire Film You Should Know About

If you’re a hor­ror fan like me who enjoys vam­pire sto­ries with a dose of real­ism (a’la Let the Right One In, The Reflect­ing Skin, Grace), then Mid­night Son should be on your radar.  It’s an inde­pen­dent film with a lim­ited release from writer/director/producer Scott Leberecht.

If first heard about Mid­night Son on Twit­ter (@MidnightSonFilm), which promises to be “a gritty, real­is­tic new look at the vam­pire genre.”  Of course it got my atten­tion right away.

Here’s the trailer:

From the film’s web­site:

MIDNIGHT SON is the story of Jacob, a young man con­fined to a life of iso­la­tion, due to a rare skin dis­or­der that pre­vents him from being exposed to sun­light. His world opens up when he meets Mary, a local bar­tender, and falls in love. Trag­i­cally, Jacob’s actions become increas­ingly bizarre as he strug­gles to cope with the effects of his wors­en­ing con­di­tion. Forced by the dis­ease to drink human blood for sus­te­nance, he must con­trol his increas­ingly vio­lent ten­den­cies as local law enforce­ment nar­row their focus on him as a sus­pect in a series of grisly murders.

If you want to see this film as much as I do, you can help out by click­ing here to demand Mid­night Son in your area.

Moonlight: Well this really sucks…

Par­don the vam­pire pun, but there’s noth­ing worse than get­ting sucked into an awe­some new TV show only to find out it has already been can­celed.  My lat­est let­down was over the CBS series Moon­light, a show about a vam­pire P.I.  liv­ing in modern-day Los Ange­les who strug­gles with life, love and his oft-challeneged quest for redemp­tion.  Sounds cheesy, I know, and there’s no short­age of awful vam­pire shows—even some with strik­ingly sim­i­lar premises—but Moon­light was one of the best I’ve ever seen.  I typ­i­cally don’t watch many TV shows (at least not while they’re still air­ing), I guess because I hate com­mer­cials, wait­ing a week to find out what hap­pens next, and spoiler-happy ass­clowns online.  So most of my TV show con­sump­tion is done all at once in the form of down­loads, DVD, or Hulu, even though watch­ing shows all at once usu­ally means I’m unfash­ion­ably late to most fan­doms.  Which brings me back to Moon­light…

For­get for a moment that the name of the show is Moon­light, which is a bad idea for sev­eral rea­sons, the most obvi­ous being con­fu­sion with Stephe­nie Meyer’s much lamer Twi­light.  Also look past the fact that main char­ac­ter Mick St. John (Alex O’Loughlin) is bru­tally hot, which much of this show’s pop­u­lar­ity with a rabid female fan­base can be attrib­uted to.  Under­neath you’ll find an intel­li­gent, action-packed, funny, and yes, roman­tic super­nat­ural drama with high pro­duc­tion value, great direc­tion, and a kick­ass sound­track.  As far as vam­pire lore goes, Moon­light doesn’t devi­ate too much from con­ven­tional mythol­ogy, but does throw a few unique and inter­est­ing twists into the mix, like sil­ver as a lethal sub­stance, sun­light caus­ing pro­gres­sive degen­er­a­tion, and my per­sonal favorite, sleep­ing in freez­ers. For the geeks, there’s even a geek vam­pire with plenty of video game and World of War­craft references—even a full-blown Leeroy Jenk­ins bat­tle charge.

Crit­i­cally it seems Moon­light didn’t fare too well, with many hav­ing dis­missed the show as silly, or per­haps more detri­men­tal, com­par­ing it to Angel. But it was an obvi­ous hit with fans, hav­ing won a People’s Choice Award for Best New Drama, and its rat­ings were noth­ing to scoff at. So it’s beyond me why CBS would choose to can­cel a good show, espe­cially after claim­ing there were plans for a sec­ond sea­son.  I’m just bit­ter I started watch­ing it with­out know­ing it was already over.

Fans of the show can sign the online peti­tion to save Moon­light, even though most online peti­tions are like pisisng into the wind.  As for me, I’ll just have to be con­tent with re-watching the first and only sea­son and mourn­ing the loss of yet another good show that’s gone too soon.

A vampire movie done right

How does a movie man­age to be dark and deeply dis­turb­ing, yet ten­der and touch­ing in the same breath? Swedish vam­pire film Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) is a beautifully-told macabre fan­tasy story that accom­plishes exactly that.

Oskar (Kåre Hede­brant) is a quiet but trou­bled twelve year old who is bul­lied by his class­mates and doesn’t know how to stand up for him­self. His life begins to change when he befriends Eli (Lina Lean­der­s­son), the mys­te­ri­ous girl who moves into the apart­ment next door.  But when Oskar’s small snowy home­town is dev­as­tated by a series of grisly mur­ders, he starts to real­ize his new best friend and love inter­est is not the girl she pre­tends to be.

“Squeal. Squeal like a pig!”

“I’m not a girl…”

Let the Right One In is part com­ing of age story, part atmos­pheric hor­ror.  Never too obvi­ous or overly delib­er­ate, it’s a sub­tle and slowly-building story punc­tu­ated by gory visu­als that are jar­ringly ter­ri­fy­ing against the film’s oth­er­wise serene and iso­lated snow­bound set­ting.  Direc­tor Tomas Alfredson’s use of spe­cial effects is wel­com­ingly under­stated in favor of a few blink-and-you-might-miss them moments of pure shock, under­scored by grue­some visu­als and an uncom­fort­able feel­ing of foreboding.

Most dis­turb­ing, how­ever, is Oskar’s dan­ger­ous infat­u­a­tion with Eli despite the hor­ri­fy­ing things she is capa­ble of.  It’s the focus on the del­i­cate rela­tion­ship between these two alien­ated youths that really sets this film apart and estab­lishes new stan­dards for what good vam­pire movies should be.