Let the Right One In
Let the right One In (2008) was a Swedish film which is usually placed into the genre of horror, fantasy and romance. It was directed by Tomas Alfredson and both the novel and screenplay where written by John Ajvide Lindqvist. The film follows Oskar, a twelve year old boy who is terrorised by bullies, but befriends a new neighbour, the mysterious Eli. Her arrival coincides with a series of gruesome attacks and deaths, leaving Oskar soon to realise that she is a vampire. However, their friendship is by far stronger than any fear of her, and they leave together.
Genre films always have audience recognitions. Familiar conventions are drawn on, and played out during the films course. The genre of horror is by no means an exception, and there is a wide range of conventions within the genre which can be easily identified with. These include darkness or dim lighting, blood, forest, ruins or open settings, and props like knives or other sharp/blade. In order to retain audience interest in the genre, familiar elements are often displayed in a new way. In Let the Right One In, all these factors are presented.
A majority of the scenes are set at night, such as when Eli and Oskar first met, and many of their meetings after that. Some of their meetings where inside, where the lighting was dim, as if Eli brings with her a sense of darkness. Also, the darkness in these scenes is around the edge, like the darkness is slowly edging its way into the scene.
Also, there is the classic blood in the genre. To start with, when Eli’s ‘father’ Hakan kills a man he drips the blood from his corpse, which is hanging by its feet from a tree. Later, Eli herself kills, leaving blood in the snow, and around her face, after she feeds from her victims. Also, at the end of the movie when she decapitates Oskar’s bullies, there is blood in the water and on the limbs floating in the pool. This also links to the themes of monsters which also appear in the horror genre. Most obviously, there is Eli, a vampire, who traditionally kills and drinks blood, can’t go into sunlight and has to ask to enter a room, however, more complexly, there is Oskar, the 12 year old boy, taunted by bullies, who dreams of violent and bloody revenge on his bullies.
The film is set in a small suburb in Stockholm, Sweden, a small built up area near to a forest and grass land, reaching a lot of open space. The buildings are grimy and dark, with plenty of spaces in alleyways or under bridges where Eli or Hakan can kill, as well as the solitary grasslands and forest. These sorts of settings are iconic to the horror genre, as they allow for all sorts of events to occur, without anyone knowing what happened, or why a dead body has suddenly been found in a forest.
The idea of being an outsider is prominent throughout the entire film. When we first see Oskar, the shots of him make him appear ghostly, connoting his character to be near enough invisible, un-belonging, and out of place. We soon learn about his time in school, and his bullying classmates, and these shots make entire sense. This shot is repeated at the very end of the film, after Oskar is forced away from Eli but his mother, but just before he runs away with her, showing these feelings which seemed to have disappeared since his meeting of Eli return.
Also, other shots of Oskar show only him clearly, and everything and everyone else out of focus. Before he meets Eli, most shots and scenes involving him present him as being alone, other people only really featuring in these shots when he is at school.
Generally, Oskar as a character is presented as being quite solitary; going for walks in the dark alone, walking his school alone, and staying behind alone after school. The presentation of this solitary behaviour shows him as an outsider. Also, his desperation at getting back at his bullies can be considered as showing him to be an outsider. His bullies are the main cause of his isolation, and so his clear, solitary search for revenge and the slightly twisted forms of it show the effect his isolation has had on him, and how this further separates him.
Eli is an outsider because she has no other choice but to be. We see she has a resistance to the life she leads, by her attempts not to befriend Oskar upon their first meeting, where she flat out tells him that they can never be friends. Eli is also always featured alone, or with Oskar or Hakan, showing her to have only two people to talk to and be around, and even more solitary life than Oskar.
The pair are presented as outsiders, which makes them so alike and a good pair. This means that when they become friends, we see the friendship strengthen, and they become increasingly more important to each other. When they’re together, all ways of presenting them as outsiders join them together as outsiders from everything else but each other.
The vampire is a figure that has been displayed throughout history, from books to cinema. It is a figure which is easily recognisable, and remains popular with audiences in many genres. Eli fits perfectly with this tradition, her behaviour making her clearly recognisable as a vampire. As a character, however, I felt it difficult to relate to or like Eli in places, though in others it was very easily to empathise with her. When we first see Eli, she seems estranged, and her telling Oskar they can never be friends makes her appear very rude. However, upon her second meeting with Oskar, I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for her, as when he is playing with a Rubik’s Cube, she doesn’t know what one is, as she’s lived separate from modernised life, and has little clue on things which are modern, appearing to even sadden her.
However, a little later in the movie, after Haken has failed to return to her with food, she lies on the floor by a deserted bridge, and pretends to be injured and unable to get up. When a man comes past alone, she asks him for help, before attacking him and draining him of his blood, and leaving the mess for Haken to clean up. Both this method of feeding and her having Haken do all of her dirty work for her shows an incredibly manipulative side of her, making her an unlikable character, and showing her as being almost heartless.
All in all, Eli and Oskar’s relationship comes across as being quite odd for the horror genre. For a start, Eli and Oskar are only young, or, Oskar is at the very least, making their characters particularly unlikely to form any sort of romantic attachment. Also, their relationship is quite strange on the whole by most people’s standards. When they first meet, Eli tells Oskar they can never be friends, possibly knowing the danger it could bring, or possibly a ploy to manipulate his feelings, whilst Oskar almost begs for a reason why, and to be able to, most probably due to his loneliness. Upon their second meeting, the pair are intrigued by one another, Oskar in particular by Eli’s mysterious persona. Quite quickly, the pair bond so strongly that the bond itself separates them from the rest of the world, and they seem to genuinely care for one another. It begins to seem as though nothing can compromise their friendship, as even when Oskar finds out that she’s really a vampire, he quickly accepts her, and she asks him to kill for her, using the feelings caused by his tormenting classmates to manipulate him.
The movie would probably work even if Eli wasn’t a vampire, though this would cause a lot of the story to change. Initially, the basic story would be the same, though probably just a very cliché ‘boy meets girl, boy gets girl’ story. Removing the vampiric element, would probably affect even the basic story, after all, why would their friendship occur the way it did and end in them leaving if she wasn’t a vampire? It would take away many of the important parts of the story, such as when Hakan kills, Eli kills, and the murders in the area, as well as the events of when Oskar discovers Eli to be a vampire, such as the blood vow which ended in her going for the blood on the floor and running away, her bleeding when he won’t invite her in, and when they finally leave together. To get the film to work without this element, the entire story would need to be re-written, as it runs along the basis of her being a vampire.
The film gives a view of Eli’s home life. The domestic representation of vampire life takes away some senesces of fear, though heightens just as many. In many ways, her life appears to be that of a normal child; she lives with her ‘father’, in a normal flat in a Swedish suburb, just as Oskar does next door with his mother. The fear here really rises when we consider how normal her life looks until its unpicked, and maybe the fact that you wouldn’t really be able to tell her from any normal child. When unpicked, there is also the fact that her father isn’t actually her father, as she is actually around two- hundred years old, and that he is Hakan, who was merely her original Oskar, and that she doesn’t know what a Rubik’s cube is, and doesn’t go to school. However, the way their domestic relationship is presented can quite easily strike fear. Near the beginning, Hakan kills a man, but is disturbed, and returns, though without his blood. Eli gets incredibly angry that she will now have to do it herself, and yells at him, showing her to always have the upper hand. After a few of Oskar and Eli’s meetings, he asks her not to see Oskar again, which she ignores, showing her lack of respect for him. Her lack of respect is also shown later in the film, when Hakan is hospitalized. When she arrives to see him, he attempts to jump out of the window, though weak, so Eli just kills him, showing the little care she had for him, and that he was just as disposable as the rest, and that she no longer needs him, which is sadly, likely to be Oskar’s fate too.
