We, The Infected

Among the LTROI deleted scenes is one of Oskar being tormented to a worse degree than what's shown in the movie proper, where he's forced to squeal like a pig, and where he's shown manipulating his home-made incontinence aid while nobody's looking. What's also shown is a scene where Oskar strikes a supine Eli with considerable force. Eli is shown briefly with an expression that looks like semi-bitter resignation. Their hands-holding and playfully hissing rapprochement is very touching.

Among the LMI deleted scenes are the "be me a little" scene where Owen is shown tearfully breaking contact after experiencing Abby's turning. The turning is shown, and looks like a rape (which it might actually be). Owen is shown guarding with his hand the site of what is presumably the wound the "uncle" inflicted on her. During this scene, Abby's face is shown: vacant (frozen) with "thousand yard stare" eyes. She's still undeniably only twelve years old, unlike the older woman shown in the counterpart LTROI scene, but it scarcely seems possible for a preteen to look more ancient (there may be some makeup or CGI involved, but if so, it's subtle - this is also undeniably Moretz).

Another deleted LMI scene is one of Abby (who is almost certainly a girl with budding breasts) wearing a virginal white dress, sitting on the floor and playing with a game that appears to be an antique single-axis wooden variation on a Rubik's Cube. She turns her attention from the game and looks to the wall; this appears to be positioned timewise immediately prior to Owen's second and last visit to Abby's apartment before she vacates it.

In the "Making Of" part of the Special Features, there's a scene of Abby sitting by the side of the pool with Owen's head between her feet. She's stroking the side of his head.

It's been said that Alfredson chose not to include the deleted scenes in the movie proper because they'd tilt its moral centre away from where it is now. Maybe so - and the result from the movie as is speak for themselves for We, the Infected - but the ambiguity their absence leaves in the wake of this decision has sparked some wonderful and sometimes heated debate where Eli's intentions towards Oskar are concerned. Without them, Oskar doesn't seem as emotionally troubled. Also, without them, the story is less clearly a "love" story.

I couldn't catch much of the commentary in the deleted scenes or the "making of" feature, but one of the things I heard relatively clearly was somebody saying that the "be me a little" scene on Owen's kitchen floor just "didn't make sense" because the bond between the kids had already been established.

A great many of the WTI crowd seem to see Abby as a cold-blooded "witch" who just picks up new minders when the old ones are lost to attrition. We can certainly see pain, withdrawal, resignation and emotional states of similar nature at various times in the movie as is, but without that incredibly haunted look in the "be me a little" scene, it isn't driven home quite as graphically just how burdened the little girl is. I never caught (if it was mentioned) why the movie didn't show Abby almost cradling Owen's head at the pool; what's shown instead in the movie proper strongly suggests Abby towering triumphantly (dominantly) over an overwhelmed Owen; I, for one, have mentioned many times in the past that the expression on Owen's face included strong elements of terror which would have been sharply mitigated with such a display of tenderness.

In both movies, the girl is shown playing some kind of game on the floor. In LTROI, I never picked up on the possibility that Eli was just playing some kind of "patience" game, waiting for Oskar to show up. In the deleted scene, with Abby's looking at the wall, the suggestion is there, even without the commentary that specifically says she's waiting for him.

sauvin wrote:Among the LMI deleted scenes are the "be me a little" scene where Owen is shown tearfully breaking contact after experiencing Abby's turning. The turning is shown, and looks like a rape (which it might actually be). Owen is shown guarding with his hand the site of what is presumably the wound the "uncle" inflicted on her. During this scene, Abby's face is shown: vacant (frozen) with "thousand yard stare" eyes. She's still undeniably only twelve years old, unlike the older woman shown in the counterpart LTROI scene, but it scarcely seems possible for a preteen to look more ancient (there may be some makeup or CGI involved, but if so, it's subtle - this is also undeniably Moretz).

What makes deleting that scene even worse is they also had to delete all the other shots that happen before and after it. You realize that when you notice the characters sitting on the kitchen floor. That entire sequence is missing and it's a shame because I think it's one of the most powerful scenes in either film. It feels much more like the "be me a little" scene in the novel than the one from LTROI does.

Watching that scene also leaves me with the impression that the best parts of Chloë's performance never made it into the final film.

A great many of the WTI crowd seem to see Abby as a cold-blooded "witch" who just picks up new minders when the old ones are lost to attrition. We can certainly see pain, withdrawal, resignation and emotional states of similar nature at various times in the movie as is, but without that incredibly haunted look in the "be me a little" scene, it isn't driven home quite as graphically just how burdened the little girl is.

Not sure if people are tired of me saying this, but I think that LMI would have been better served if Abby was a simple "cold-blooded witch." The thing that makes Abby unsympathetic in my eyes is that she does actually care about her keepers, yet seemingly does nothing as they succumb to their familiar fates. That is, it's easier for me to accept a character that uses and discards people she absolutely does not care for than it is for me to sympathize with someone who is literally killing her loved ones over and over again. The important question is not "does Abby love Owen and Thomas?" but how Abby expresses that love when push comes to shove.

On that note, I think that Chloe's acting was way too nuanced than what the story called for. She was haunted, and burdened and angsty, but I think the story would have been better served if Abby had been the villain of the piece. In LMI, the narrative suggests that every character is a victim of Abby, from Thomas, to Owen, to the policeman. Thomas begins the film hating his life and dies apologizing to Abby, Owen had that mix of terror and relief at the pool. I think Kodi even said in an interview that it was 50/50 love and vampire glamor that caused Owen to leave with Abby. Since it is an "Americanized" remake, it should have embraced the Hollywood narrative, which in horror movies, usually requires a clear victor, good or bad. This role could have been filled by Abby, but Chloe played Abby as way too human. The result for me is that she ends up an unsatisfying monster, and a pretty terrible human being.

cmfireflies wrote:

A great many of the WTI crowd seem to see Abby as a cold-blooded "witch" who just picks up new minders when the old ones are lost to attrition. We can certainly see pain, withdrawal, resignation and emotional states of similar nature at various times in the movie as is, but without that incredibly haunted look in the "be me a little" scene, it isn't driven home quite as graphically just how burdened the little girl is.

Not sure if people are tired of me saying this, but I think that LMI would have been better served if Abby was a simple "cold-blooded witch." The thing that makes Abby unsympathetic in my eyes is that she does actually care about her keepers, yet seemingly does nothing as they succumb to their familiar fates. That is, it's easier for me to accept a character that uses and discards people she absolutely does not care for than it is for me to sympathize with someone who is literally killing her loved ones over and over again. The important question is not "does Abby love Owen and Thomas?" but how Abby expresses that love when push comes to shove.

On that note, I think that Chloe's acting was way too nuanced than what the story called for. She was haunted, and burdened and angsty, but I think the story would have been better served if Abby had been the villain of the piece. In LMI, the narrative suggests that every character is a victim of Abby, from Thomas, to Owen, to the policeman. Thomas begins the film hating his life and dies apologizing to Abby, Owen had that mix of terror and relief at the pool. I think Kodi even said in an interview that it was 50/50 love and vampire glamor that caused Owen to leave with Abby. Since it is an "Americanized" remake, it should have embraced the Hollywood narrative, which in horror movies, usually requires a clear victor, good or bad. This role could have been filled by Abby, but Chloe played Abby as way too human. The result for me is that she ends up an unsatisfying monster, and a pretty terrible human being.

I actually wished they wouldve embraced the actual "Hammer Horror" way, which is kind of Hollywoodish but in a delicious Victorian way. Combine LTROI and Great Expectations. Yess!

cmfireflies wrote:

A great many of the WTI crowd seem to see Abby as a cold-blooded "witch" who just picks up new minders when the old ones are lost to attrition. We can certainly see pain, withdrawal, resignation and emotional states of similar nature at various times in the movie as is, but without that incredibly haunted look in the "be me a little" scene, it isn't driven home quite as graphically just how burdened the little girl is.

Not sure if people are tired of me saying this, but I think that LMI would have been better served if Abby was a simple "cold-blooded witch." The thing that makes Abby unsympathetic in my eyes is that she does actually care about her keepers, yet seemingly does nothing as they succumb to their familiar fates.

The only alternative courses I can see for Abby to take is to kill herself, do without human companionship entirely, or turn somebody special and pray for a perfect and lasting union. These first two alternatives may be a lot to ask of a tween or early teen, and this last alternative goes morally in the exact opposite direction by imposing her fate on another person.

If it's true that Eli hasn't been in a "normal" relationship in a couple of centuries, then Oskar might represent her first Thomas cycle (disregarding LTODD); if she also finds herself prone to these cycles, she'll find herself in the same predicament, and we're just not seeing it because Eli is so much more everything in our eyes than Abby, including "innocent" and "virginal".

cmfireflies wrote:On that note, I think that Chloe's acting was way too nuanced than what the story called for. She was haunted, and burdened and angsty, but I think the story would have been better served if Abby had been the villain of the piece. In LMI, the narrative suggests that every character is a victim of Abby, from Thomas, to Owen, to the policeman.

The same is true of LTROI; everybody Eli touches becomes a victim of some kind sooner or later. It seems the same is even true of Dracula, whom the girls resemble only distantly. This seems to be an ineluctable part of archetypal vampirism: cursed to kill outright in order to eat, cursed to be shut of human companionship and community, cursed to existing mostly in tormented solitude, cursed to not even knowing the release of eventual death and cursed to watching loved ones be corroded and destroyed.

"Just so you know, I can't be friends with you" are among the first words Owen ever hears Abby say, words she repeats later as Owen storms in a huff from her apartment. If she's been there before, done that before, it means these first words are an acknowledgement that Abby finds him interesting and knows what getting involved with him means - for them both. She wants him, but really shouldn't reach out to him if she really did care. In the apartment, she says these words with pain and resignation, maybe because she knows it's possible he won't be back, and maybe because (in that moment) the little girl who lives outside the beast knows she really should let him go. In her apartment, there may also have been a tinge of pained relief.

cmfireflies wrote:Thomas begins the film hating his life and dies apologizing to Abby...

The Thomas I saw was also in an impossible position. Maybe he hated his life (goodness knows in his place I certainly would), but he most certainly didn't hate her. Maybe he believed she'd perish without him, and this is the only reason he hadn't allowed himself to get caught or get killed long ago. Losing her is a fate worse than death, an impression I get that's bolstered by his asking her not to see "that boy" that night (he's jealous and afraid of being replaced, although it's also possible he doesn't want happening to another innocent young boy what happened to him).

cmfireflies wrote:Owen had that mix of terror and relief at the pool.

I'm not sure how that mix of terror and relief (and boatloads of other emotions I also saw flitting by) would have been affected if I'd seen Abby cradling his head those first three times I saw the movie in the theater. The filmmakers would have had to re-arrange it; what's shown in the "making of" has Abby almost cradling his head between her legs, his nose maybe six inches away from, well, you know. That would have spun the whole story into an unwelcome direction, with the folks on the IMDB boards screaming "seductive cold-blooded little witch!" and joking "here's how monsters give birth!"

First immediate impression I got from seeing it was a very old, very concerned and distinctly maternal Abby hunkering down, gently stroking his head and trying to comfort an Owen who'd just survived a nearly successful attempt on his life, ears probably ringing and heart pounding. If they'd conveyed this and omitted the look of relief, awe and terror, the whole movie would have spun off into yet another direction. Abby's "objective moral" standing wouldn't have been impacted, but our impression of her overall would have been very different from what it is now.

cmfireflies wrote:I think Kodi even said in an interview that it was 50/50 love and vampire glamor that caused Owen to leave with Abby. Since it is an "Americanized" remake, it should have embraced the Hollywood narrative, which in horror movies, usually requires a clear victor, good or bad. This role could have been filled by Abby, but Chloe played Abby as way too human. The result for me is that she ends up an unsatisfying monster, and a pretty terrible human being.

And what, pray tell, is a monster but a "pretty terrible human being"?

Abby's existence is a fundamental transgression even worse than Dracula's precisely because he's not human, but she is. How "unsatisfying" a monster can Abby be when she can hide out in underpasses like a spider waiting for the first flutter-by jogger to fall into her clutches?

Yes, Americans love their movies all neatly wrapped up and bow-tied when the end credits roll, don't they? Ambiguity is anathema because it doesn't summarise cleanly and completely in a two-minute sound bite on the six o'clock news. We're left wondering "What just happened? What happens now?"

If Abby is an "unsatisfying monster, and a pretty terrible human being", then so is Eli, and for exactly the same reasons. It's less obvious because of the emotional impact: LTROI somewhat more clearly the story where "love was found and accepted", but all four kids ride out to the coming moonrise towards uncertain futures and probably irresolvable anguish.

If it's true that Eli hasn't been in a "normal" relationship in a couple of centuries, then Oskar might represent her first Thomas cycle (disregarding LTODD); if she also finds herself prone to these cycles, she'll find herself in the same predicament, and we're just not seeing it because Eli is so much more everything in our eyes than Abby, including "innocent" and "virginal".

Of course I don't like the idea of Oskar being a "first" Thomas, but it's a very real possibility. I'm seeing it, sure, but the key difference is "first." Eli is a child, she can't be faulted for not realizing how fast Oskar will age or what the implications of that would be if he stays with her. This experience will be entirely new to her and the two kids would have enough things to worry about without thinking about the "long term."

Under the common law (now probably replaced by specific statutes) if a man's dog happens to injure someone else, there's the concept of "scienter" or knowledge of the dangerousness of the animal before he would be held responsible for that person's injuries. In effect, a dog would get one free bite without the owner being liable for injuries. The idea is that before that bite, an owner had no idea that the animal was dangerous, but afterwards he is on notice that the dog could be a menace and is legally responsible for what the dog does.

Eli's first normal relationship is with Oskar. She doesn't know what will happen. It's heavily implied that Thomas was not Abby's first caretaker, so Abby is more responsible for what happens to Owen than Eli is responsible for Oskar. Because Abby lived through what happens with Thomas, she owes it to Owen not to repeat that tragedy. I'm not saying it would be easy, or even maybe possible, but the key for me is that the movie makes no attempt to show that Abby would treat Owen differently.

One thing that I don't agree with in LtROI was the idea that because Oskar/Eli isn't sexually interested in each other, then their love would somehow be "purer." I don't think that Abby is somehow less innocent than Eli.

sauvin wrote: The same is true of LTROI; everybody Eli touches becomes a victim of some kind sooner or later. It seems the same is even true of Dracula, whom the girls resemble only distantly. This seems to be an ineluctable part of archetypal vampirism: cursed to kill outright in order to eat

I don't see Oskar as Eli's victim. He might become one, but he's not at the movie's end. But the photo links Thomas and Owen together, suggesting Owen's end would be like Thomas's and making him a victim of Abby.

And what, pray tell, is a monster but a "pretty terrible human being"?

Nothing, in the real world. But fantasy is different. There can be different valid goals that conflict with "the general advancement of the welfare of humankind." Eli would be a monster, but if she were human, she'd be a wonderful human being.

Abby's existence is a fundamental transgression even worse than Dracula's precisely because he's not human, but she is. How "unsatisfying" a monster can Abby be when she can hide out in underpasses like a spider waiting for the first flutter-by jogger to fall into her clutches?

I always thought that vampires, living on the blood of others, owed it to their victims to be happy or at least be contented or satisfied. Why would a vampire rob someone of their happiness only to be mopey and miserable? Clearly she decided that her life was worth living at the expense of others, so why the anguish? (I mean, rhetorical question, I know why Abby is sad, but this is in response to why I find her an unsatisfying monster.)

As for why she's a pretty terrible human being, I would have to say that she loved Thomas, yet she pushed the majority of the risks and dangers of her life onto him. We got a reason (in the book) for why Hakan was the one killing, but if Abby and Thomas were sweethearts, there's no reason why he should be the one who goes out "earning the bacon." At the very least, they should share the risk of discovery, but no. Both knew that his death was a real possibility, yet Abby was OK with him going out anyways. It's more than a bit selfish, isn't it?

And Eli isn't a terrible human being. Given the choice, the vast majority of people would kill strangers to survive and call it just. At least Eli doesn't harbor any delusions about her survival. (If she starts and continues a cycle of Oskars, I'll say she's no better than Abby)

And Eli isn't a terrible human being. Given the choice, the vast majority of people would kill strangers to survive and call it just. At least Eli doesn't harbor any delusions about her survival. (If she starts and continues a cycle of Oskars, I'll say she's no better than Abby)

This, Eli's sadness isn't a way of her using it to guilt others. In fact, Eli tries to hide her pain from others. As is seen by the fact that she turns her head away from Oskar ever so slightly when he starts questioning her about her parents, she's hiding her pain. Not using it as a form of manipulation or guilt. Even when Eli kills Jocke, she mourns in private. But she has no delusions in what she is, as she lets Oskar know later on in the film. She is quite aware of what it is she is and what it is she has to do.

Abby, I felt that her anguish was always a means of maybe laying on a guilt trip to others...but that was just my thought.

cmfireflies wrote:Because Abby lived through what happens with Thomas, she owes it to Owen not to repeat that tragedy. I'm not saying it would be easy, or even maybe possible, but the key for me is that movie makes no attempt to show that Abby would treat Owen differently.

And furthermore, what would happen if she DID treat him differently? Whats the good side of this ambiguity? Does he go down the tracks, spend some quality time with her and then go back to his old life? LTROI was much more symbolic and spiritual. In LTROI, you dont have to figure out their future together. As long as they have love, you can be rest assured that everything will be ok, if you so choose.

cmfireflies wrote:I always thought that vampires, living on the blood of others, owed it to their victims to be happy or at least be contented or satisfied. Why would a vampire rob someone of their happiness only to be mopey and miserable? Clearly she decided that her life was worth living at the expense of others, so why the anguish? (I mean, rhetorical question, I know why Abby is sad, but this is in response to why I find her an unsatisfying monster.

Interesting theory but I would disagree because a vampire in the end is the most miserable person on earth. Having said that, they have to live high on the hog for a few hundred years before they realize that materialism is there highest high which has long lost its luster.

danielma wrote:

And Eli isn't a terrible human being. Given the choice, the vast majority of people would kill strangers to survive and call it just. At least Eli doesn't harbor any delusions about her survival. (If she starts and continues a cycle of Oskars, I'll say she's no better than Abby)

The vast majority of people might or might not kill strangers to survive and call it just, but there's a scale to these things. Suppose a particular person's personal survival "depended" on wiping out an entire village; would the villagers, having foreknowledge of their impending demise, agree with this "justness"?

danielma wrote:This, Eli's sadness isn't a way of her using it to guilt others. In fact, Eli tries to hide her pain from others. As is seen by the fact that she turns her head away from Oskar ever so slightly when he starts questioning her about her parents, she's hiding her pain. Not using it as a form of manipulation or guilt. Even when Eli kills Jocke, she mourns in private. But she has no delusions in what she is, as she lets Oskar know later on in the film. She is quite aware of what it is she is and what it is she has to do.

Abby, I felt that her anguish was always a means of maybe laying on a guilt trip to others...but that was just my thought.

Or maybe she's just not as adept at masking it. Abby isn't as tightly bound and rigidly controlled as Eli is.

cmfireflies wrote:Of course I don't like the idea of Oskar being a "first" Thomas, but it's a very real possibility. I'm seeing it, sure, but the key difference is "first." Eli is a child, she can't be faulted for not realizing how fast Oskar will age or what the implications of that would be if he stays with her. This experience will be entirely new to her and the two kids would have enough things to worry about without thinking about the "long term."

Under the common law (now probably replaced by specific statutes) if a man's dog happens to injure someone else, there's the concept of "scienter" or knowledge of the dangerousness of the animal before he would be held responsible for that person's injuries. In effect, a dog would get one free bite without the owner being liable for injuries. The idea is that before that bite, an owner had no idea that the animal was dangerous, but afterwards he is on notice that the dog could be a menace and is legally responsible for what the dog does.

Eli's first normal relationship is with Oskar. She doesn't know what will happen. It's heavily implied that Thomas was not Abby's first caretaker, so Abby is more responsible for what happens to Owen than Eli is responsible for Oskar. Because Abby lived through what happens with Thomas, she owes it to Owen not to repeat that tragedy. I'm not saying it would be easy, or even maybe possible, but the key for me is that the movie makes no attempt to show that Abby would treat Owen differently.

So, who's the dog here? Abby, or Thomas?

Growf!

More responsible, perhaps, by an epsilon or maybe a delta. Eli is taking a child away from home and into an uncertain future; she has to know that Oskar's course will be radically altered, and the nature of her existence leaves very little hope the change for him will be wholesome or heatlhy.

But let's digress for just a moment.

The factory floor is unbelievably congested with conveyors, sealers, webs and other machines and contraptions; it's slippery, to boot, and generally covered with a film of exceedingly fine dust. There are things sticking out - small and pointy things everwhere to get poked in the back or the ribs with (and even eyes!) if you're not careful, but the folks who work in the offices upstairs are forever handing out notices that the folks on the factory floor need to be working harder, faster, using aging and indifferently maintained equipment, fewer materials, fewer crew members, longer hours and shorter breaks without any sacrifice in quality or "safety". Quality issues result in reduced pay, and injuries (regardless of fault) often result in termination.

People drive dozens of miles one way to get to work in decades-old cars whose transmissions are held together with peanut butter and baling wire and ball joints threatening to give way. They pray a lot that their cars won't give out on weekdays because three "unexcused" absences within any calendar year results in termination, as do three or more tardinesses. They'd repair their cars if they could, or buy newer cars, but they often have to decide between paying for car repairs or having a plumber to fix leaky pipes and faucets or plugged drainpipes, or carpenters to patch up roofs that water the living room every time it rains. They'll often find themselves being hounded by bill collectors because they can't pay their doctor bills because the company's insurance policies are too full of exclusions and exceptions.

It's a paradox that the people who serve your food to you in the restaurant, and the people who package your canned and boxed foods can themselves often ill afford to eat anything pricier than rice or noodles.

The folks I'm talking about do not have children. Those who do can tell you some pretty horrifying tales of economic oppression.

They'd all go somewhere else, if they could, where the paychecks can actually pay some bills, and where they're not constantly treated like lowly and mindless beasts of burden. There is, unfortunately, nowhere else to go.

Take almost any random dozen of these people and ask them to judge Abby's "greater" responsibility for what happens to Owen because she has a Thomas template to use as a guide. I think they'd be inclined to key more on the two vampire girls' diet before anything else, saying that they have the life of Riley, got it made in the shade, they don't have to work to keep bread and cheap fake butter on the table.

Owen might someday grow up to fill in for Thomas, you say? I think they'd say "Too [censored] bad!" What's so terrible about it? The girls kill, the guys kill, sure, and they all deserve to be thrown into a blast furnace, but after all the thousands of people the girls killed just to keep their own skinny little bodies upright, we're supposed to get upset that they're "abusing" a boy or man every few decades?

"Get real, dude", they'd say. "They're murderers; the guys they rook into doing their evil for them are evil, too, and it's bad that the girls turned them into what they became, but they're all killers. Besides, what's so terrible about how the guys live compared to how we live? They got money coming out their ears, they can afford new apartments every few weeks, all the food they want and probably everything else, and they don't have to worry about which bills to pay this week or next! They don't have to run off to work every day and risk getting mauled by all this machinery! Let those smug lazy sons of zeroes try putting in a single day like ours! We bet they can't, they're so mollycoddled!"

If we're going to talk about the legal implications of what Abby is "considering" for Owen in terms of relative degree of criminal liability as compared to the kinds of outcomes Eli could be expected to envision for Oskar's life with her, let's not get lost in abstruse jargon written by people wearing three piece suits and working in carpeted offices very far beyond the point where the sky meets the corn fields. Let's talk instead about the law that folks living in and near my cornfield have to live with. The only way you're going to get anybody here all choked up about what happens to Owen, what might happen to Oskar and what probably did happen to Thomas is with a lot of spin doctoring, some bad press and a bought-off army of preachers.

cmfireflies wrote:One thing that I don't agree with in LtROI was the idea that because Oskar/Eli isn't sexually interested in each other, then their love would somehow be "purer." I don't think that Abby is somehow less innocent than Eli.

Glad to hear that, actually. According to dictionary.com, the term "innocence" is derived from Latin words and essentially means "harmless" or "doing no harm". Isn't that a laugh? I, also, don't find one girl more "innocent" than the other unless the word is used strictly in a sexual sense - but the novel leads us to believe that Eli may have in the past also used her body tactically, doesn't it? If Abby is really "slinkier" and honestly more open to a certain kind of approach, might it not be in fact somewhat more "innocent" than using a swish here and a pirouette there in a game of sexual blackmail?

cmfireflies wrote:

sauvin wrote: The same is true of LTROI; everybody Eli touches becomes a victim of some kind sooner or later. It seems the same is even true of Dracula, whom the girls resemble only distantly. This seems to be an ineluctable part of archetypal vampirism: cursed to kill outright in order to eat

I don't see Oskar as Eli's victim. He might become one, but he's not at the movie's end. But the photo links Thomas and Owen together, suggesting Owen's end would be like Thomas's and making him a victim of Abby.

I give you the pool scene as the first clear indication that Eli has already affected Oskar's life adversely. Granted, such an extreme culmination could not have been easily predicted, but Eli did tell Oskar to hit back, and hard. Oskar became Jimmy's direct victim, but Eli's victim indirectly.

cmfireflies wrote:

And what, pray tell, is a monster but a "pretty terrible human being"?

Nothing, in the real world. But fantasy is different. There can be different valid goals that conflict with "the general advancement of the welfare of humankind." Eli would be a monster, but if she were human, she'd be a wonderful human being.

... o/~ if I only had a heart... o/~

cmfireflies wrote:

Abby's existence is a fundamental transgression even worse than Dracula's precisely because he's not human, but she is. How "unsatisfying" a monster can Abby be when she can hide out in underpasses like a spider waiting for the first flutter-by jogger to fall into her clutches?

I always thought that vampires, living on the blood of others, owed it to their victims to be happy or at least be contented or satisfied. Why would a vampire rob someone of their happiness only to be mopey and miserable? Clearly she decided that her life was worth living at the expense of others, so why the anguish? (I mean, rhetorical question, I know why Abby is sad, but this is in response to why I find her an unsatisfying monster.)

Because the decision to live wasn't necessarily a "decision". It's an instinct, a kind of Prime Directive that all living organisms must obey. She may even have actually consciously decided to continue to live, but would it have been an easy one to make, given what it would cost, given what it continues to cost across the centuries? Does not Eli in the novel also flirt with the idea of suicide? - and if so, then how can anybody say that Eli can live unperturbed by her "decision" to continue to exist?

Dracula isn't troubled by such problems. No surprise here; he's really just a man-shaped crocodile.

As I understand it, some of us are given an LTODD in which Eli and Oskar become of a kind, and that Oskar himself is sometimes seen by others with a markedly predatorial look in his eye. If so, what does this say about the likelihood of Oskar's having retained his humanity? Couldn't this mean that Oskar doesn't trouble himself with the costs, and that his continued relationship with Eli has taken her further away from her own humanity? They have eachother, for as long as they stay together, and they'll live "happily ever after" together unless... or until... - but they'll not likely have anybody else. The precariously balanced Eli who first met Oskar at the jungle gym may now be truly lost forever.

cmfireflies wrote:As for why she's a pretty terrible human being, I would have to say that she loved Thomas, yet she pushed the majority of the risks and dangers of her life onto him. We got a reason (in the book) for why Hakan was the one killing, but if Abby and Thomas were sweethearts, there's no reason why he should be the one who goes out "earning the bacon." At the very least, they should share the risk of discovery, but no. Both knew that his death was a real possibility, yet Abby was OK with him going out anyways. It's more than a bit selfish, isn't it?

We know what Abby demands of fiftysomething Thomas, and we can guess at some of the reasons she makes these demands, but I'm betting we can't guess at them all. We can make guesses at what she gives him in return, but some of the potential speculation into this area carries a very large risk of slamming abruptly into my personal ROAD CLOSED signs. They've been together for a very long time; if Abby were as relentlessly and seamlessly selfish as what the movie leads us to believe, then we have to ask just what the [censored] possessed Thomas to stick with her for so long.

He's her husband, and he loves her; he'll do whatever he can to support her. She's his wife, and has been for forty years; who knows what she has to give that he might find of value? The movie hints oh, so very quietly and oh, so very briefly at just one thing without giving us the slightest clue what the rest of the bond between them might based on. I'm guessing it's a give-and-take thing, as it is with all viable and vital marriages of such longevity. The movie just shows enough of their relationship to underscore her child-like humanity and her monstrosity without concerning itself at all with Thomas' point of view. Like the cop, he's really just a Cardboard Cutout (tm) put there partly for this purpose (the remainder of said purpose being to leave us wondering just what it means that Owen sings "eat some now, save some for later" on the train).

sauvin wrote:The vast majority of people might or might not kill strangers to survive and call it just, but there's a scale to these things. Suppose a particular person's personal survival "depended" on wiping out an entire village; would the villagers, having foreknowledge of their impending demise, agree with this "justness"?

Eli is not "the vast majority of people", Eli is a child. John makes a point of Eli choosing to go on killing because he is a child - this is actually an important element in my sympathy for him. Is John right? What is the experience with child soldiers? They have been figthing in numerous wars, and I guess there must be some evaluation about their efficiency and mentality towards killing other human beings. I haven't checked upon this myself, but perhaps John have? Perhaps a child soldier is easier to condition (brain wash ) for the killing task than adult soldiers?