Let The Wrong One In

  Let the Wrong One In is... well, just look at the title. It's basically advertising itself as the next Saturday the Fourteenth, but for vampire movies. A goofy Irish horror comedy that repurposes the Shaun of the Dead formula to work with broad humour. OK, OK - broader humour.

 For a while, that's enough. This is obviously nowhere near as good as any Edgar Wright movie, not on any level, but it delivers its silly jokes with decent regularity, the cast is willing to take the ridiculousness as far as they can take it, and there are some fun conceits here and there. The lowbrow humour does get old pretty quick, though.

 Baby-faced Matt (Karl Rice) is a good kid who runs into trouble when his dumbass, deadbeat brother Deco (Eoin Duffy) suddenly pops up at his home after being turned into a vampire by a bridal-dress-wearing creature of the night (Mary Murray). Deco's had troubles with addictions, so his impulse control is... a concern, to put it mildly. As if things weren't complicated enough, a vampire hunter (Anthony Head) soon arrives with his sights set on Deco. And the hunter was to be the groom-to-be of the head vampire (she got infected during her hen party at Transylvania, in one of the film's funnier conceits)... so that in turn leads the vampires to Matt, Deco and their mom (Hilda Fay). Will our protagonists be able to save their family, and put a stop to the vampire's bid to take over Dublin?

 The setup is convoluted, but not as complicated as I  make it sound above. It's not really plot heavy-film, it's just that it works a little too hard to set up its lightweight farce.

 As for the humour, expect good-natured slapstick and a lot of easy jokes. It made me laugh a few times; The Transylvania-set introduction (not filmed in Transylvania) scores a great joke by setting up an old-school Hammer Vampire movie atmosphere, only to deflate it when a deranged hen party group runs into the frame, inflatable penis in tow. Later there's a cut from a (pretty gory) slashed neck to someone spurting mayo on some fries.

 The bulk of the jokes, though, are not quite that clever. Here's a couple of examples of the sort of stuff we're dealing with: There's a running gag where when Deco tries to become a bat, he farts instead. And when Matt tries to rouse an unconscious vampire hunter, the dignified old man mumbles "I don't want to go to school today, mom..."

 Writer/director Conor McMahon knows exactly the movie he wants to make, and he and his crew delivers without a fuss and with some good technical chops. There's a lot of blood in the film (most of which ends up covering poor Matt), some cool practical effects and some incredibly cheesy CGI (that, to be honest, fit the tone of the movie pretty well.)

 There are some attempts to inject some style into the proceeds - smash cuts, montages and the like (I didn't mention Edgar Wright idly earlier) - but they seem a little bit off, as if the scenes needed to linger a little longer to feel organic. The script, meanwhile, as willfully dumb as it is, features a lot of nifty setups, callbacks and punchlines peppered throughout. There's no question that the level of craft here is much higher than, say, stoner comedies, at least. As for the acting.. the acting's ok. This is not the sort of movie you'd hold against anyone in it -comic exaggeration is the order of the day- but other than Deco none of the characters embarrass themselves with too much mugging.

 I dunno. It's agreeable enough. Other than some "haha, look, that conventionally unattractive person is horny", there's nothing wrong with its willingly dumb comic formula. My main issue with it - the fact that its more inspired moments during the first act raised my hopes a little - is an entirely self-inflicted problem. It's a perfectly fine time waster, and to be honest I don't think it ever tries to be anything more. If you're after a likeable tale about Irish wasted youth taking on vampires, well... I'd direct you to The Boys from County Hell - but this is an all right second choice.