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Vera and Vanja
are sisters and are having a hard time
fitting into society as they need to drink human blood
in order to stay alive. When they end up killing a
gang member, they have to run through the empty streets
of Stockholm as a gang of bikers try to hunt them down.
Not Like Others, or Vampires as it's originally called
in its native language, was very poorly received back
in 2008 when it was released theatrically. The critics
hated it and moviegoers agreed. The movie ended up
making a pathetic $10,000 at the Swedish box-office
and even I refused to go see this movie in the cinema.
Why? Because the movie just looked so terrible and
Swedes generally don't know how to make good horror.
Not Like Others is the third vampire flick from
Sweden that I've seen. The first was Frostbite which
was a full-on vampire horror flick with a lot of
gore and an even higher cheese-factor. Then we got
Let The Right One In which was 99% drama and maybe
1% horror (which could explain why I was so disappointed
in it and didn't even bother to review it). Not Like
Others lands somewhere in between as it's a drama
but with a more horror-oriented atmosphere than the
one found in Let The Right One In.
The movie, which by the way clocks in at the very
shy running time of 68 minutes excluding end credits,
doesn't have much of a story. We basically get to
follow two vampire sisters as they run around through
the deserted streets of Stockholm while being chased
by a biker gang. The body count is very low with only
two murders which of one is off-screen. The vampires
do not have fangs but use a small blade to cut a juicy
vein open and then suck from the victims neck. Not
Like others may look like a very cheap film - I think
most people would have guessed that the budget for
this was $20,000 or so but it was in fact much higher,
$400,000 to be more exact. I don't know where all that
money went but Not Like Others looks like a cheap
TV-production made by students (or an SVT-Drama
production as we would call it in Sweden).
No, Not Like Others is certainly not a good movie but
there are some good qualities to be found in it as
well. The acting is above average for Swedish horror
productions, the characters are very well-developed,
there are some moments of suspense to be found in
here and director/writer Peter Pontikis clearly nails
his vision because I'm sure that many people will
find this to be very artistic. Also, the movie may
just be 68 minutes long but it really felt like it
lasted well over the 90-minute mark. Now, whether
that's a good or a bad thing I'm not sure but it wasn't
as excruciatingly boring as most critics have claimed
it to be. Had I went to see this in the cinema I would
probably have felt cheated but as a DVD rental it's
certainly not the worst local horror film that a Swede
can pick up (no, that would be Camp Slaughter).
Nothing worth mentioning.
Very nice score that really lifted the movie a lot,
this was responsible for most of the successful
suspense scenes.
I don't think that this has been treated fairly as
I don't find it to be that horrible or boring but
I understand the criticism that it has received and
I don't think that the general audiences will enjoy
this movie very much. Still, I thought that it would
be worse and it was actually a pretty nice surprise.
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