Matthew Dalby

How does the film ‘Let the Right One In (2008) apply to Todorov, Propp and
Levi Strauss?
Also refer to:

 Mise en Scene
 Use of Sound (including Music)
 Cinematography
 The representation of both characters and places.

Let the Right One In is a Swedish film based on the novel of the same name. There have been a
couple of different films based on the novel, but this one really combines the romantic genre with
the horror and thriller genre well.
Propp, Todorov and Levi-Strauss explored the way that narratives are structured and shaped by
writers in novels, folklore and myths. Firstly, Propp examined many different versions of one folk tale
in order to make comparisons in the structure and shaping of it. The structure that Propp suggested
was highly predictable and can be applied to many folklore tales. ‘Spheres of Action’ (or eight
character roles) can be applied to Let the Right One In. For instance, the hero in the narrative could
be Oscar because he is motivated in the film by himself being bullied and that his parents are not
together. His father seems to ignore him when his friend arrives and this makes the audience feel
sorry for him. Because the term ‘hero’ has connotations towards ‘good’, we could say that Oscar is a
victim and that he is ‘admirable’ because he stands up to the bullies.
Several villains can be applied to this theory from the film. On one side, the villain could be the
bullies that pick on Oscar throughout the film and at the end he gets his revenge. However, I think
the villain mainly is not actually Eli herself, but the vampirism that has manifested her and controls
what she must do to survive. If you take away the vampirism from Eli, you could consider her as the
‘helper’ or ‘princess’ towards Oscar because she does help him escape the continuing cycle of being
bullied and after the events that occur, she is his ‘reward’ for escaping it.
The ‘false hero’ and the ‘donor’ could be Eli’s friend called Håkan because he provides her with
blood but does it in a way that it cruel to the victim. He keeps them alive while putting them upside
down and then cuts their throat. Although he is helping Eli and protecting her from being caught –
making him the donor – he is doing it in such as cruel way that he is really being portrayed as the
false hero because he could be considered as good to Eli but not to the poor victims that he killed.
Furthermore, Todorov can be applied to the narrative because he argued that all stories begin with
an ‘equilibrium’. This is when potentially opposing forces are in balance with each other. The
potentially opposite forces in the film are that Eli and Håkan are able to get away with the killing
because no one else is involved and that Oscar has a good life with his mother, even though he is
being bullied at school. The disruption to this equilibrium is when Oscar meets Eli for the first time
(which is at night – hinting that she doesn’t like the sunlight because they only see each other at
nighttime). When they start to become friends, that is when Håkan messes up with the blood
collecting and this leads to Eli going out and attacking a drunken man. Because she has to result to
hunting, someone sees and suspicions on the new people that have just moved in starts to rise. After
all of the escalating events that happen after this, Eli is left alone without Håkan and must get away
from there in order to prevent getting caught by the authorities. After all of this, Eli helps Oscar in
order to escape the bullying as well and they both are able to be happy with each other away from
there.
Lévi-Strauss argued that all narratives are structured around binary oppositions. For example, good
versus evil is used throughout the film because Eli shows that she keeps flipping between the two.
She is good to Oscar by helping him overcome the bullies, but is evil to herself because she cannot
resist killing people for her blood intake. Also the binary opposite of light versus dark is used

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 Matthew Dalby

throughout the film in the mise en scene because you can see that Eli hates the sunlight and it is
shown when the woman that becomes a vampire bursts into flames when the sunlight hits her. It
shows that the vampires are banished to darkness and the dark has connotations to evil so it fits
with the idea that Eli can be evil because she is a vampire. Contradicting to this though, the fact that
Eli shows compassion towards Oscar shows that she is not evil and that maybe the ‘villain’ or evil
being is actually just the vampirism and that she is the victim as well.
The music that it used has connotations to evil because it uses tension just as Eli attacks someone.
This can be considered to be more effective in a horror film because a high percentage of what the
audience feels when seeing a film is the music aspect and without the tensed music, it would not
affect the audience as it does. The sound effects that are placed into the footage (or enhanced) are
completed during the post-production stage of the film and the sound effects used most effectively
are the door creaking noise when it opens (to add more drama to the scene) and the animal sounds
that Eli makes when she kills a human. These animal sounds are most affective on the audience
because it clearly shows that she is not human and that she is evil in the sense that she is like a
monster. When a persona is portrayed as being a vampire, the audience associates them as
consulting with the devil, therefore making them evil and have lost their humanity.
The cinematography that is used is really clever because instead of using close up shots of the
events that happen between Eli and her victims, the director chose to use long shots and mid shots.
This was really effective because the audience was able to use their own imagination instead of
relying on the graphic content and it could make it a more intense horror film because of these long
shots and not quite knowing exactly what has happened in the scene. This creates tension in the
scene because of the unexpected and the audience does not know quite what is happening, creating
the thriller and mystery genre aspect of the film.
When we are first introduced to Oscar (and when Eli leaves) it shows his reflection and he is
leaning against the window. This could suggest that he is trapped by the window and cannot get out
to the outside world and live a normal life. Eli helps him to ‘break the window’ and get out into the
world in order to prevent his bullying from continuing. However, when she has to leave, it shows
Oscar in the same shot; showing that without her he is trapped. This clashes with the binary
opposition of Eli being evil because he needs her friendly support in order to break through and keep
strong.
The good use of a close up is when Eli starts to bleed because she enters a room when she has not
been invited in. This close up also gives the scene drama and atmosphere because of the effect given
when the blood leaks from her ears, eyes and hair. This makes the audience feel uncomfortable
because the thought of a girl (as she is represented as a girl) bleeding unwillingly is unnerving and
makes the audience horrified at what they are watching – no one wants to see a young child going
through pain like this. Other close ups are used in the film in order to signify important objects that
will be dangerous in the film towards both Oscar and Eli and creates a foreshadowing effect because
the audience can sense that something bad will happen involving those objects. For instance, the jar
of acid that Håkan has is shown by a close up in order to signify danger and is proven to be a danger
when Håkan pours it over himself in order to protect Eli (or save himself).
The cinematography, sound effects, music and mise en scene really play the part in setting the
scene for the audience and without all of these attributes; I do not think that the film would be as
good as it is to the audience. I think that this film is more effective than Hollywood horror films
because of the fact that the director has allowed the audience to use their own imagination instead
of concentrating on the CGI aspect and that the sound effects can influence how we imagine the
narrative to progress without the necessary visual drama.

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