The land of the midnight sun shows its fangs
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Vampire mania bites Sweden!
In recent times Let the right one in has seen a great deal of success at foreign film festivals . Based on Johan Ajvide Lindqvist's novel Låt den rätte komma in it tells a frightening tale of twelve year old Oskar meeting a vampire girl in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm.
Oskar learns to overcome the bullies pestering him every day at school, but by making some dangerous decisions...
Vampyrer, a vampire story about two blood drinking sisters hunted by a vengeful biker gang.
The vampire wave in Swedish cinema is well timed with a recent surge in horror literature. Never before has so much horror literature been written or translated, with authors such as HP Lovecraft in prominence.
The reason? Some of the older books are just now leaving the protection of copyrights (for instance HP Lovecraft died in 1937, after 70 years his works become free).
But the particular Swedish feeling of a dark suburbia of the 80s and a dingy Stockholm of the early 2000 shown in the two films also tell us a lot about present traumas, of isolation in urban life and of the decline of the welfare state.
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