Let the right one in Essay

In this essay, I shall be analysing the film “Let the right one in” (Early 1980’s). It was the original version of the recently released Hollywood film “Let me in”. It was a Swedish film that had English subtitles. The story starts off with everything being normal (equilibrium) and then two stranger to the city move into a rundown apartment flat. Shortly after the suspicious pair move in bizarre murders begin to happen and disrupt the normal flow of things. At the end though, every turns into a new equilibrium. (Tzvetan Todorov’s theory)

It’s set in a low class Swedish town during a harsh cold winter, which I think the producer did deliberately to prepare the audience for the cold, dark things that happens in the film. The support this, lots of eerie music is used during the film and changes to match what’s happening. When someone is attacked, the music switches a more blood pumping danger music type, and if someone’s on their own it’s more tension building.

The camera work also supports this sense of ‘Coldness’ in the film. There are lots of close up’s on the characters faces during the film, and most the time they have a look of sadness or anguish, symbolising the depressing mood of the film. This film also has binary opposites throughout. There is ‘Good vs. Evil’ with Oskar and the bullies, and then ‘Old vs. Young’ with Eli and the man who looks after her. (Claude Levi – Strauss)

The main character, or ‘hero’, is 12 year old boy called Oskar. He is an average kid, who is bullied and has no friends around him. However, he is a very smart child, and takes a great interest in murders and forensic science. He keeps a small scrapbook, which he puts in newspaper articles and other related things, and hides it in his draws.

Oskar then becomes friends with the girl who just moved in next door, Eli. Eli is a vampire child, who was bitten centuries ago and has been 12 years old most her life. She is represented as a small, poor helpless girl at the start but her true colours begin to show throughout the rest of the film. However, she did use to be a boy; she was castrated a few hundred years ago. In my opinion, Eli fits into three categories from Vladimir Propp’s Theory. She seems to be the ‘Villain’ as well as the ‘helper’ and the ‘princess’. She may have to kill people to live, but she does help Oskar face up to the bullies and save him from them, and she and Oskar develop a close bond with each other.

This film uses the theories of Tzvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp and Claude Levi – Strauss very effectively, along with the camera work, the mise en scene and representations of the characters to make this film really successful, even if it’s in a foreign language with subtitles.