A Sad, Tender, Ugly and Beautiful Near Masterpiece and 100% Uniquely Iwai.
Surely this must be maybe the most underrated film of this decade ?

After the Golden Age of the asian film wave appr. 1995-2005 and the appearance of cult directors as Takashi Miike,
Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Shunji Iwai, Toshiaki Toyoda and Sion Sono from Japan, and Park Chan-wook, Kim Ki-duk,
Bong Joon-ho, Kim Je-woon from South Korea many of them has gone International.

Miike went commercial early on and befriended Tarantino and has been lost in a teenage fluff quagmire for a decade
now. Park tried Hollywood and failed miserably with Stoker where his magic touch was gone. Kim failed with an un-
funny spaghetti western action-comedy and Bong almost made it with his sci-fi Snowpiercer (some like it, some not so).
The Magic is Gone. It feels like they've lost their style anxious to adapt to a supposedly Hollywoodified infantile western
audience. Which is wrong, because the western audience that liked them in the first place is ... exactly, they're Non-
Hollywoodified, and that's why they liked these asian directors.

But, then there's Shunji Iwai.

The Suicide Friends

In his first US film Iwai shows us he's absolutely uncorruptible and a true auteur. He's made a Horror film called Vampire
that's Not a horror film and not about a Vampire. If he wanted No One att all to see this film he should called it ... yes,
Vampire. After the Dracula and vampire film and TV craze this title sounds tired and cheats the viewer to think that Iwai
just made yet another Dracula adaption .... Zzzzz, snore. But if there's some Dracula aficiados out there still they get
seated in the nearly empty cinema and watch in stupefiement as this depressing artmovie drama about suicide rolls.
I guess that's the way it went? Because of the hostility this Great Film met after showings at Film Festivals.

Shunji Iwai has made the film No One wants to see and that's an impressive Feat. This film is intensely personal,
strange and fascinating, depressing and uplifting, ugly and beautiful, brutal and tender and uniquely Iwai.
It has the feeling of his early 1990's films the TV short ones and Picnic with an added darker element maybe.
It's just beautiful the way he makes his american cast work, they're Great. Kevin Zegers, Keisha Castle-Hughes and
Adelaide Clemens, fine actors all of them.

For me, this is one of the best films Shunji Iwai has ever made after All About Lily Chou-Chou and up there with
Picnic and Swallowtail Butterfly in a tied 2nd place. Yes, almost a masterpiece, that nasty rape and killing scene when
The Vampire, Simon, watched one of the freaks felt out of place. Simon gave the impression of being too tender,
even though being some sort of a "murderer", to socialize with that serial killer weirdo fancrowd

Yu Aoi, the sad exchange student

Vampire is filmed in Vancouver, Canada and it starts a rainy day at a deserted busdepot where Simon (Kevin
Zegers) meets a young woman, Jellyfish (Keisha Castle-Hughes). They've met through the suicide site SidebyCide
and she thinks they will die together this day. But Simon have other plans. He suggests an easy and quiet method,
sleeping pills and the draining of her blood and when she's dead then he will join her.
With syringes and glass bottles he kills her - help her to die -drains her and then he drinks her blood ... and vomits.
Maybe he thinks he's really a Vampire or there's other reasons for his blooddrinking habits?

Simon Williams is 28 years old and a biology teacher and with a sick mother at home (Amanda Plummer) with the
Alzheimer disease. He's a member of the suicide community net site and he helps or talks people into dying by
being drained of their blood. He dumps the bodies in big freezers, some at his home, and in one scene a homage to
Bram Stoker we see the lids open and thinks of some coffins opening in a cellar in some ancient Transylvanian
castle. Simon gets known in the suicide- and freak weirdo circles as The Vampire, even though no one knows his
real name yet. One day he meets a whole group of dead-wannabees, including a girl with the nickname Ladybird,

Simon and Ladybird

played beautifully by Adelaide Clemens (she's great) a traumatized girl with her son killed by her ex-boyfriend
and who wants to die through the hands of the vampire. Yes, she knows and he's telling her all. Will he do it ?

Simon knows to handle the suicide girls, he's goodlooking and a sweet talker and wants to be in command. But when
a somewhat pushy non-suicide "normal" girl, Laura (Rachel Leigh-Cook) starts to help him with his mother, and finds
out that he's not interested in her, then she gets vindictive and his paradise of death starts to tumble down.

There's a strange fishing scene when the camera is upside down when Simon's hanging out with a police and his sister
Laura, maybe because he's with "normal" people for once and not with suicide cases or freaks interested in serial
killers or blood drinking Transylvanian Counts? The rape and kill scene is Nasty (not by Simon, but he watches).
Otherwise, this film is absolutely fascinating and also surprisingly tender and sometimes gripping. Great Shunji Iwai.
anamorphic widescreen 1.78:1, english with english subs, no extras.