1)
Horror is a genre I’ve always had mixed feelings
about, while I love horror movies that are well made, one must also take notice
to the fact that horror movies can be made on the cheap quite easily, and
because of this for every good horror movie that comes out that I really enjoy,
dozens more come out from small production companies and TV channels such as
the SyFy channel, meaning that good horror movies for me, are quite few and far
between, however I would say I am a fan of well made horror movies, as I am
with well made movies of any genre, however when it comes to foreign films I
have more of a distaste to them, the reason for this is not because I don’t
like foreign films or their subtitles, but because when you translate a film between
languages via subtitles or dubbing, you are re-writing the original script of
the movie, as many words in different languages do not have an exact meaning,
instead just a loose translation. This means that when I watch a film, I can’t
always be sure if the subtitles are actually correctly portraying the script of
the movie (this was something that American viewers of “Let the Right One In”
complained about, as the DVD version had inaccurate subtitles.), however I do
have a lot of respect for any foreign film that has a good enough reputation to
be popular in Western Countries, as it is a true testament to how hard the
filmmakers have worked on their art.
2)
The trailer to Let the Right One In draws in its
audience in an interesting way, it could be argued that it doesn’t try to draw
the audience in, in the conventional horror movie way (the same as it could be
argued that the movie is not a horror as much as it is a dark fantasy) and
instead seems to go for more of showcasing the film itself, it starts of eerie
with little going on but the music carrying the trailer, and then begins to
show its horror aspects with Eli killing someone, but then draws upon the
friendship between Eli and Oskar, it’s an interesting trailer that would
encourage people to see the film just to find out what it was about, the only
clear target audience would be fans of vampires.
3)
In
booklet
4)
The theme of being an outsider is present
throughout all of Let the Right One In, especially for Oskar, who is not shown
with any friends other than Eli, with the only other children he’s seen with
being those who are bullying him. This is also true of Eli who only interacts
with two characters, Oskar and Hakan until the climax of the film, because Eli
is a vampire she is segregated from the rest of the world in that, she can only
come out at night and due to her being a vampire, most people she met would
more than likely be food than friends. Oskar seems to be a very hurt and
tormented loner, spending much of his time in solitude and cutting and pasting
newspaper articles into his scrapbook, then going out and playing on his own
with his knife, acting out fantasies of hurting and killing the people that
bullied him.
5)
I liked these characters in the same way I like
villains such as Hannibal Lector, and the reason I use him for this comparison
is this. When watching Let the Right One In I did not feel personally that this
was a sweet romantic film about two outsiders that find each other, I instead
perceived the film in a much darker way. These characters are so multi-layered
that when you put thought into it, you can see quite well what sort of people
they would become in later life.
First is Oskar,
while at first he seems like the typical shy reclusive boy who’s been bullied,
you can feel sympathy for him and he may seem quite sweet, and while he may be
a sweet young boy he also has quite a dark subtext behind him. Oskar shows many
signs of becoming a serial killer, he is very reclusive and does not socialise
with anyone outside of his mother and Eli, he is shown to have no friends in
school and is always seen either alone in school or bullied, which may just
seem like he is unfortunate in that regard but many serial killers come from
backgrounds of being bullied or outright terrorised at school, also Oskar
unfortunately has divorced parents, which makes his home life rather difficult
and as children many serial killers are often abandoned by the father or have
very controlling mothers, or both. Of course these things can happen to anyone
without them becoming a serial killer, but it seems as if this movie wants the
audience to know that. He often shies away in his room and does nothing but cut
out newspaper articles to keep and pretend to kill his bullies, not just hurt,
but kill, because of these signs to me it also makes Eli’s character even more
sinister than I already found her to be
Eli is a vampire and likely hundreds of years
old and Hakan goes out to harvest blood for her, when he fails she is angry and
scolds him, and eventually when he fails for the last time in the hospital, he
allows her to drink his blood. This is clearly not the relationship between a
father and daughter, and when you see how the characters look at each other and
talk to each other their true relationship becomes much more evident. Hakan and
Eli talk almost like a couple in a loveless marriage, when Hakan is getting
ready to go out to harvest blood for her he states to Eli that he’s not good
for much else, which indicates to me that he is now harvesting blood for her as
a job, and because he just doesn’t know what to do with himself now, as opposed
to a labour of love in the past, also certain aspects of the performances such
as touching each others face have given me the impression of Eli that may be
quite sinister compared to others interpretations. To me, Eli is not looking
out for Oskar because she loves him, or because she deeply wants to be his
friend, but is instead befriending him as she knows that he is someone that
could harvest blood for her, based on the tendencies he has as a boy at the
moment. She even states in the film that she’d like him to kill for her, and an
entire scene has him attempting to kill a man for her. This is not a romance, I
like Eli not because she is a sweet young girl (in fact both the source
material and one suggestive scene in the movie indicates that she may not
actually be a girl, however this is not as relevant to the question) but
because she is in fact a dark and manipulative villain, taking advantage of
Oskar to replace Hakan, who she likely also befriended at a young age.
These characters
are dark, and are rather haunting, which I like. The movie presents us with
characters that are quite true to life from a psychological aspect. I find them
both to be very interesting and to quite a large extent, believable.
6)
I found that the narrative was very slow in its
pacing, which I liked, I felt that we got to know these characters more through
the pacing than we would have done should this have been any run of the mill
horror movie. In particular I liked the theme of how bullying affects children,
although I did not find the bullies intimidating, I could clearly feel sorry
for Oskar and understand, despite never being bullied myself, I could
understand the hurt he must feel and his loneliness, I think this was part of
the story that was touched upon rather greatly. One of my favourite scenes of
the film was when Oskar decides enough is enough, he is done running and he is
done taking abuse, the moment that Oskar stands up to his bullies and injures
one of them, I felt a sense of pride for him, and it is in fact my favourite
scene of the movie.
7)
Oskar’s relationship with Eli could be
considered unusual whether you believe in the romantic relationship, or the
using relationship that I believe in. It’s not very often we’d see characters
of such young ages become romantically attached to a vampire, while the concept
of a human-vampire romance has been done with characters like Buffy the Vampire
Slayer with her two vampire lovers, Angel and Spike, over the series’ run, and
with new films such as Twilight and even “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” starring Gary
Oldman, none have ever used characters of this age before, the closest to this
age ever seen before was most likely Buffy, who’s character was aged 16 when
she was involved with Angel, and I think that it adds quite an uncomfortable
feeling when watching this movie. There is such a childlike innocence from
Oskar that makes me feel very uneasy especially with Eli’s motives and some
scenes such as Eli laying in bed with Oskar, made me feel very uncomfortable
watching. I don’t think this movie would have worked if Eli was not a vampire,
or any other paranormal entity, I think that a lot of this films narrative
relies on the childlike innocence of Oskar and how he feels towards this
vampire, a creature far more powerful and dangerous than he would ever be,
however I would also say that if this film had been written with Eli as a
normal girl, this film probably would not have been nearly as successful. People
like vampires, because of the mystery surrounding them, they are between life
and death but not stupid like a zombie, and while they have violent animal
impulses they can hide them, unlike a werewolf, I think that the vampire
symbolises danger in these films and almost playing with fire. If this film had
not been about a boy and his vampire friend, this film probably would not have
been as successful because audiences wouldn’t feel that rush and that sense of
danger when watching it
8)
Let the Right One In shows Eli living in an
apartment with the windows blocked out to keep the sunlight from shining in and
killing her, but aside from that fact the apartment is relatively normal, this
can either make the vampire eerier in that she lives a relatively normal life
and then goes out hunting for people or sending Hakan out to kill people for
their blood, or it can diminish the fear we’d normally have for a vampire,
similar to how we are not generally afraid of dogs, but we are scared of their
wild counterpart, the wolf. However I
would say that in some regards this can help people feel more comfortable with
the vampire, it did not for me however, I found Eli to be more frightening in
how she lived in a relatively normal home, but then knowing what’s going on in
that home, because that home could be anywhere, even next door to you, and
you’d never know.
9)
As I’ve previously stated, I think that Hakan
has been incorrectly labelled as her father and I believe he was almost
certainly a boy she convinced to kill for her at a young age, much like what
Oskar is now. Hakan to me adds something more to the character of the vampire
by giving an insight into what a relationship with a vampire would be like, for
them to remain forever young, and while the human does not. I believe Hakan to
have been a previous partner of Eli for many reasons I have already stated, but
also because he asks Eli not to see “that boy” (Oskar) one night, there was no
given reason for this, Oskar was not a danger to their lifestyle, I believe
that Hakan simply felt jealous and threatened by this new boy that Eli was
spending a lot of time with, and probably foresaw Oskar’s future and wanted Eli
to stay away to prevent this from happening. While I don’t think this shows
anymore of Eli’s character, I think it does speak volumes about their
relationship, and I think in a way it does subvert the familiar tropes with
vampires, we are not seeing a strong and scary creature all the time.
10)
I feel sorry for Hakan, he shows a lot of love
for Eli, even committing murder for her so that she can feed and putting his
own safety from both the people he attacks, and the law on the line. The two
contrasting scenes I have selected are Hakan’s death, and Eli scolding him for
not being able to get her blood. They
contrast due to the fact that while one scene has the two angry at each other,
the other shows Hakan loving Eli so much that he is willing to die for
her, (prior to which he also burned his
face so that he couldn’t be used as a means to find her). I believe that most
people probably would not understand the relationship between Hakan and Eli
however, due to many misinterpreting it as a father/daughter relationship when
it’s nothing of the sort, the movie never even makes this claim, and as a
result of this people would not have the appropriate emotional response they
probably should have because of this. I feel that many people would just be
shocked by the fact that Eli just drunk from her “father” and wouldn’t think of
the subtext behind it, that Hakan is an old man who cannot provide blood for
anymore aside from giving her his own.
