According
to rumor, patients of this crummy metropolitan hospital know when their vitals take
a turn for the worse when they are paid a visit by a certain doctor in his
clown costume. He is like the Patch Adams of death, but at least he keeps busy.
The outlook is not great for thirteen-year-old Cris, but she has been offered a
rather unconventional cure from a fellow patient in Denise Castro’s Salvation (trailer here), which screens tonight during the 2017Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
Cris
is at the age when she wants to rebel against her mother and authority figures,
which is natural enough, but does not make her a model patient. Walking the
halls one night, she slips into a sequestered wing with only one occupant. That
would be Victor, who is even less cooperative than she is. He also claims there
are medical reasons for his isolation. He is not contagious, he is a vampire.
Any day now, he will regain enough strength to slip away into the night. He
might be willing to turn Cris and take her with him, if she shows sufficient
commitment to the undead way of whatever.
This
film is just dying for you to compare it to Let the Right One In—and there is a stylistic and thematic kinship. However, it
is a stretch to call it a horror movie. It is more aptly described as a darkly
fantastical coming of age story—unless you have a phobia of hospitals, in which
case Salvation will scare the pants
off you.
Marina
Boti and Ricard Balada brood with fierce, anti-social intensity as Cris and
Victor, but weirdly enough, the four or five-year age difference between them
feels more awkward then the protective relationship Eli the little girl vampire
shares with her parent-like familiar in Right
One. However, Laura Yuste is absolutely terrific as Cris’s long-suffering
mother, who still has to put up with her crap during some of the darkest days a
parent can know.