I enjoyed this film so much that I also watched Lost Boys: The Thirst and Lost Boys: The Tribe. In that order too. I know, kinda backwards.
I felt that this movie went a little too quickly at the beginning. Not long after the family moves to California David is progressing to a vampire. The way that he was changing was very different from other vampire films. Instead of biting, David drinks the blood of one of the vampires from a bottle which David believes is some alcohol. The majority of vampire films the victim has to get bitten by a vampire in order to become one. Signifying the transfer of bodily fluids, as a sexual transfer. But in this case all that was taken away. The history and interest behind vampires is dismissed into something as simple as taking a drink. Maybe it's a way to show how easy it is to fall into temptation. The spiritual side of vampires. The whole religious background to vampires is that they represent all the sin and evil in the world. Something else that I see in other vampire films is the aspect of dying. I have seen that humans become vampires once they are bitten and once they have "died". Hence, the term "undead". The humans in these films just have to make their first kill. Once they have done that, the become full vampire. In this film the creators took out the consequences of being a vampire out. There isn't a transfer of a disease and the human doesn't have to sacrifice their life to be this "creature".
The camera work was cool in this film. At times the camera would put the viewer in the place of the vampires. Times when they were flying and chasing their victims. It made the viewer be the villian of the film at certain parts of the story. It gives more suspense to the film for the viewer to watch the movie that way. The camera makes it seem that they are the vampires. Something else I liked was that the camera would hide the vampires when they would be aggravating the humans. The vampires would be going around the house reving the engines of their motorcycles, yelling and screaming; creating chaos. All the while none of the characters could see them and neither could we. There were other times in the film when that would happen. As the viewer, I felt the chaos around the characters and it made me feel uneasy and nervous.
I enjoyed this film. Corey Feldman was hilarious in all three of them! I loved his hashed-out personality. He was so funny!
I love your attention to camera in this post! And you do nice job of considering the tropes of the vampire subgenre. But why do you think the filmmakers changed the vampire story in this way? What are the results or consequences of change the vampire story? Does this have something to do with the time when the film was made? Does it matter that they are teenagers? Why don't they have to give up their life?
ReplyDeleteI think the makers might have changed the idea of vampires (like in Let the Right One In) maybe to reach a wider audience. Like as discussed in class(es), Vampire films in the past have older white men as the vampires. And after a while that can get boring. And also it can blow our minds. To think that what we think of children being innocent and naturally ignorant about these "adult" ideas is unreal.
ReplyDeleteI think that one reason they don't have to "die" to become a vampire would be because that people then, and now, are selfish and think that they shouldn't have to sacrifice any part of themselves to be able to "have their cake and eat it too". Why should I have to give up something to have it all? I should just be able to have it all.