The good news to me here was I got to see this one quicker than last year’s rave reviewed foreign horror movie [Rec], lol. I did approach it more apprehensively however – my response to all the “best vampire movie ever!” quotes was pretty much, “yeah, sure … because of course every new genre movie released in the past few years has to be immediately the best of its kind,” lol.

Well, it turns out, never mind those comments .. because if this isn’t at least one of the best vampire movies, it’s certainly one of the best young love stories I’ve seen. I wrote the previous sentences before taking a gander at the movie’s IMDb message board (where the boffins reside, don’t you know ) hoping to find some kind of outraged mention of “the crotch shot” that genuinely took even me aback here, only to discover that in fact what you see appear to be scarred genitals indicating that the (cute! cute!) Eli might, as in the novel, be a boy afterall – there are vague exchanges here and there about “her” gender. What it comes down to in the end, I think, is after 200 years, does it really matter? And y’know what? This makes it an even more beautiful love story to me.

In any case, all I can say right now is this movie ultimately took my breath away, I literally didn’t want it to end and when the final scene closed, I just couldn’t wait to see it again. I’m still uncomfortable with the phrase “best vampire movie ever” because it’s such a peculiarly broad sub-genre – the phrase just doesn’t seem like high enough praise to me on the one hand, and on the other, just doesn’t seem to mean much at all. It’s one of the best horror movies I’ve seen, certainly, and like I said, it was the romance that truly slayed me. The music plays along with this, blending from gripping strings to a tender piano theme.

Yes, it does kinda seem like at last we’ve hit another one of those, “gush, gush, I’ll think about it later – loved it, bye!” reviews on this one, lol. Sometimes I find myself faced with my ridiculous queue of movies to watch and end up doing nothing because I can’t make a decision; then there are movies like this that, as soon as the opportunity arises, I truly drop everything for. The Fall fell into the same category tonight, but this was the one that truly satisfied.