LET THE RIGHT ONE IN This is the film that from day one I've heard that if I see nothing else I have to see this, this supposedly revelatory pre-adolescent vampire love story from Sweden. Is it those things? Well, it is Swedish. It is a pre-adoloscent love story involving a vampire and a young boy. Is it a revelation? It is considerably strong, original, engaging, and even touching I didn't love it to the degree that I think I'm supposed to. Oskar is a shy, awkward 12 year, 8 month, and 9 day old boy with no friends, and many bullies. Eli, is an anti-social, nocturnal 12 year old girl (more or less) that has just moved next door to Oskar with her Dad. After a couple of awkward, and short encounters in the courtyard of their apartment building Oskar and Eli begin to form a very fond affection for one another. Meanwhile, from the day that Eli and her father move into the neighborhood murders start to occur, and it's only a matter of time before Eli's deadly secret about who she really is gets exposed, and the strong bond that she has generated with Oskar gets challenged. I think the problem with LET THE RIGHT ONE IN in terms of why I didn't find it quite as incredible as everyone else did has absolutely nothing to do with the film, and more that I saw it towards the end of the festival after I had already seen a handful of good European horror films. I think had I seen this earlier I would have been more impressed with its atmospheric approach, but I saw it after I had seen LEFT BANK, SAUNA, and JUST ANOTHER LOVE STORY which isn't really horror, but the mood matches. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN would be my pick for best of the bunch however, if only because it works extremely well on two totally separate planes. It's both a successful love story (in fact, successful love story first), and a very original vampire film. Typically, one of those will do just fine, but the fact that it has both and incorporates both so well together is what I think makes it special. The film is supposed to come out on dvd in a month. I suggest renting it, if not just straight out purchasing it, especially for anyone wanting to sit down and watch a good, artistic horror film on Halloween that will also entertain the girly girls with the sweet love story at the core of the film. GACHI BOY: WRESTLING WITH A MEMORY GACHI BOY is about young law student Ryoichi and his dream of joining the school's professional wrestling club. After seeing them perform again on campus he gathers his nerves and asks if he can join their team, which they desparately needing some kind of spark to avoid being shut down by the school happily accept. However, after months of training it seems as if Ryoichi isn't getting much better, and when they send him in for his first scripted match he forgets it after the first few moves. The fight turns out to be incredible because Ryoichi reverts to his inner instinct of just not wanting to lose, and so he puts on a twenty minute long show, unscripted, which spells danger for the group with the motto of "safety first", and causes the reveal of Ryoichi's great secret to a couple of his teammates. His great secret is that he has some brain damage from an accident, and he can't remember anything about his day the moment he goes to sleep. Despite his secret the couple of teammates that know allow him to keep wrestling for real against opponents that are told to lose, which causes Ryoichi "The Poison Arrow" to become a school sensation. If professional wrestling was this good with this much heart I would subscribe to the Vince McMahon fanclub, to-day. GACHI BOY is essentially 50 FIRST DATES where Drew Barrymore is a skrawny wannabe wrestler, and Adam Sandler is a wrestling ring. The main difference between the two films being that Ryoichi knows he has brain damage as soon as he wakes up, and he is the one trying to keep the secret from everyone else so that he can pursue his dream, and in the process bonding with people that share his love of professional wrestling. I think I've used the term "crowd pleaser" quite often already in the past few days, but I really don't know how else to best describe GACHI BOY. It's the classic underdog story where perserverance and passion comes heavily rewarded with friendship and the kind of success that every performer wants - the emotional investment of the audience. In terms of sheer excitement, laughs, and fondness for the characters I have not seen a better film at Fantastic Fest, any year. I was struggling to contain myself from both falling out of my chair from laughter with the amateur wrestling performances and the best play-by-play announcing this side of Bob Eucker in MAJOR LEAGUE, and from jumping out of my chair during the climactic tag team match. Sports films simply do not get any more entertaining than this. Thanks, The Beef
