Let the Right One In Film Analysis

Let the Right One In is a 2008 Swedish romantic horror movie, directed by Tomas Alfredson. The movie was based on the 2004 novel of the same title written by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the screenplay for the movie. The movie was produced by Carl Molinder and John Nordling and then distributed by Sandrew Metronome. When selecting who would play the main roles in the movie, it took over a year to for them to be chosen, in the end two 11 year olds Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson were chosen for the lead roles. When the movie was released in the UK, it was clear that these actors were unknown and so this made it more difficult for the movie to become successful globally. However, following the release of the movie both actors were commended by movie reviewers and Alfredson himself for their performances.

According to Todorov’s theory, a movie should go through certain stages and I think that this movie in particular does go through these stages however this movie in particular doesn’t go through the stages too quickly and so it was harder for the stages to be picked out. To begin the movie, there needs to be an equilibrium so that the audience can familiarise themselves with the characters and the settings. For this movie, it begins by showing Oskar – one of the main characters – being constantly picked on by other boys at his school and then it shows that when he goes home he sits in the courtyard where he practices knife attacks on a tree. From this the audience can assume that Oskar is willing to attack his tormentors but he doesn’t, and they can also assume that Oskar is often bullied and therefore isn’t going to stand up for himself unless it’s necessary. The next stage for an event to take place and for this movie there isn’t a clear event and this is because the other main Eli turns up and other things start happening such as people dying due to Eli. For example, she’s not very friendly towards Eli to begin with, she also goes hunting for blood to feed on and her ‘guardian’ goes hunting for blood for her as well. With all of these significant things happening in the movie, it then becomes clearer that Eli herself is the main event and this is because the next stage – which is the recognition of event – takes place when Oskar realises that Eli isn’t a girl and in fact she is a vampire. As Oskar learns that she is vampire, he questions this and when he does she begins to bleed form various places of her body as though she is proving what she is to him. In almost every movie there is a time when they try to resolve or do end up resolving the event that has taken place, however in this movie the audience think that the event has been resolved when it fact it hasn’t. Oskar see’s Eli for one more night before she moves away and this is when the audience think that she is gone for good and so from here there should be a new equilibrium. However as the end of the movie gets closer, there is a scene in which one of Oskar’s tormenters gets his older brother to give Oskar an ultimatum – as Oskar doesn’t say anything he gets his head pushed under the water in the swimming pool and after a minute or so Eli pulls Oskar from the water and the camera shows three of Oskar’s tormentors have been slaughtered. This shows the audience that Eli isn’t going away from Oskar anytime soon but in fact the new equilibrium for this movie is that Oskar doesn’t have to put up with being bullied anymore. This is shown in the last scene of the movie where Oskar is sat on a train with a basket in front of him where Eli is hidden but they are tapping Morse Code to each other through the wood of the basket.

 Audience expectations are something is taken into consideration when creating a movie but also when advertising the movie and making it appealing. If the audience like the advertising they see they will want to the movie, however through the advertising – especially the trailer – the audience will have built up an idea of what they want to see in the movie. As this is a movie that is about romance and horror, the audience will expect both of these genres to made clear when watching the movie, but as this is a movie based on a vampire, they may expect more horror than romance to be shown. I think the audience for this movie would expect the movie to contain a little bit of gore as it does have a vampire as one of the characters, but there wouldn’t be too more gore to put people off the movie. I also think it would be expected that some of the characters get killed due to the nature of the movie. However, because the movie is also a romance, the audience will be expecting a little bit of romance to be in the movie, but because the two main characters are so young, I don’t think that the audience would expect a lot of this.

 There aren’t many scenes in the movie that show the element of romance and I think that this is because the characters are so young in the movie. There is one scene where the two characters just sleep in the same bed and they also hug in various scenes but that is about as romantic as the movies gets, although the audience do know how the two characters feel about each other. As a lot of the movie is based more upon the horror elements in the movie, it means that there are more scenes that have ‘horror’ in them but many of the scenes are tame in comparison to other horror movies. There is one scene in the movie where Eli’s guardian pours chemical over himself and when we next see him in the hospital where he offers his own blood to Eli as he doesn’t want to live anymore, but the audience can see the damage to his face and so this could be considered an element of horror. We also see a couple of attack on different people throughout the movie such as when Eli bites a passerby’s neck for blood and she also attacks someone else who then turns into a vampire. However we see this person in the hospital where she opens up the curtains and bursts into flames because of the sunlight. There are also a few more scenes that are similar to these ones. Another scene that is movies with iconic things is when Eli starts bleeding from various places in her body, I think this could be considered an element of horror because it isn’t what you expect to happen and it also makes the audience want to squirm slightly.

This movie does contain a few of the functions that Propp has for character’s however some of them aren’t necessarily what the audience they are going to be when they start watching the movie. It is obvious from that start the bullies/tormentors in the movie are going to act as villains as they contain to bully Oskar until the end of the movie, but when Eli first comes into the movie, the audience can’t be sure on whether she is going to be a villain also because she is a vampire. However as the movie goes on, the audience could place Eli into the villain category for the fact that she kills a lot of people, but in the end it turns out that Eli was more of a hero than anyone else in the movie because she saves him from being drowned by the bullies at the end of the movie. This is an unusual character type because for a hero of a movie, it wouldn’t be expected that the 12 year old vampire would fit the category and I think this is hat separates this movie from other horror movies. For Oskar’s character I think he becomes a helper in the movie because he allows Eli to be herself and he doesn’t run away from her when he knows the truth but he also doesn’t tell everyone what she is and what she has done to other people; he could also be considered a victim due to all the bullying that he got put through before Eli killed the tormentors. There is also another helper in the movie, I think, and this is Håkan because he sacrifices himself for the sake of Eli and besides Oskar there isn’t anyone else in the movie that would have done this for her. With all these different characters in place, I think that this movie does conform to most of Propp’s ideas about characters and the functions that they provide in the movie and I think is something that lets the audience connect to the characters easier.

 There isn’t much of an opposition in this movie that it made obvious and so I don’t think that it conforms to Strauss’s theory of binary opposition. However, if there was to be any type of opposition in the movie, I would think it would be either Good vs. Evil in terms of Oskar and his bullies, but also Eli and all her victims even if she does turn out to be a hero. There is also the opposition of youth vs. age but I don’t think this plays a large part in the movie and so I wouldn’t say that this works in Strauss’ theory however it does show a clear difference between Oskar and Eli themselves because one is a lot more insightful compared to the other. Also with Oskar and Eli as the main characters, it could also be said that there is an opposition in the way that it’s the supernatural world vs. the real world but I don’t think that any of these oppositions play a part big enough in the movie to be considered part of Strauss’ theory about binary opposition.

 In conclusion this is a movie that conforms to many theories and the typical elements that should be found in a horror but sometimes these are gone about in a different way to other movies. The thing that makes this movie unique is that even though it does conform, it is a different movie with a different way of approaching things, for example not many horror movies have a 12 year old girl as the hero of the movie, so I think that this is what makes this movie successful and different.