A very late and un-timely review by myself / Let The Right One In - Film Analysis

[Dietz]

Hello PeteMork
Of course i imagine a (bit superhuman) girl like that could exists without any implications! If i think back to my childhood a two year difference was worlds apart - the older kids appeared always a little superhuman to me. And who - i mean seriously now - wouldn't have given his soul for a (goth) girl/boyfriend who could snap the arms of these bullies just like that. I'm completely with you in that.

I meant something else with my comment and i was thinking a little more about the whole vampire theme. If we create a conscious Being (vampire) with an inherit morale dilemma (need to kill to survive) there's no way out for this Being (if it has humanistic and morale standards) except by self-abandonment. For me it is an impossible problem from the start and in it's own, a circulus vitiosus and for that reason in the end completely irrelevant. There is no CHOICE for that Being to decide if it wants to be good or bad. It is - from our morale point of view - bad from the very beginning and thus unfit to represent any morale problem because it is not a problem at all, it is a statement in its own and for that reason useless.
It also can't be solved. It's like Division by Zero. Also not with certain "aids" or "crutches" like said blood bank or with a trick - as several people on the forum tried - to separate the "good" Eli from the "bad" Eli. These are all - from a logical point - understandable (but futile) reactions in order to try and somehow dissolve this dilemma. Because we all feel it and we don't like to see our beloved character tainted by it.
What i mean in the end is this: a "vampire" is absolutely fine with me - as long as it is not forced into killing people. As long as it has a choice to do good OR evil things. And that i believe is the very foundation for every good story. For a "real" vampire the morale situation is already lost from the beginning and therefore inert and of no consequence whatsoever.

To that end i believe the vampire "archetype" is not the best choice for any "serious" fiction as it represents and carries this unsolvable issue. Why not use a superhuman girl without morale impasse? (which for me by the way would make - like for you - everything else more plausible) Probably because the director (and in that matter the audience) needs an easy, common and familiar explanation for her supernatural abilities, like for a werewolf or a unicorn. If he wanted to create something new he would need to explain everything (background, abilities, etc.) from scratch. He didn't had that intention nor the means - it would have damaged the film beyond recognition.
He took the compromise and i for my part blend this dilemma out of the movie as a whole, because for me it damages the character of the girl.

Cheers from Dietz

[Dietz]

Just wanted to add something to explain my rather harsh criticism of the vampire theme in the story. It vanishes completely when it's obviously not of relevance as in a comedy or a pure fantasy tale. That's why i was referring to it's use in "serious" fiction like this movie. In that case it has of course two different sides to it: Fantasy and Reality - and there's the actual "problem". In depicting our two main actors with their real-world problems it also opens up and elevates the moral dilemma of the vampire into reality. And that's not all. The story lets "real" problems arise by entangling reality and fantasy, by letting them clash together (girl can't eat, uninvited girl bleeds, hungry girl kills). Of course the movie is dramatizing and filtering things (social environment, public, police, indifferent adults), but the reality aspect remains. This is probably the reason why many viewers are so upset about the "happy ending" and can't see it as that. They are inclined to project the future in a serious way: The kids will bring death and havoc upon every settlement they'll visit. This shows how careful and nuanced one must be when dealing with a "hybrid" narrative to avoid misunderstandings.

Cheers from Dietz

[PeteMork]

I keep circling back to what I consider the reality of Eli’s world. The very fact that she can love a member of the species she has to kill in order to survive, implies to me that the inherent moral dilemma you describe already exists, likely since day one of her being turned. And like most moral dilemmas, there is a solution. Just one example would be if Eli and Oskar accumulated so many friends over the years, that they could become voluntary donors. You yourself mentioned blood banks. The fact that Håkan can collect blood in unsanitary, unrefrigerated bottles for Eli to consume later suggest that this option is a part of JAL’s constructed reality, no matter how ‘ex machina’ it may appear. JAL’s vampire, at least in Eli’s case, can’t be an indifferent killer of humans as were Dracula et al., simply because the love story couldn’t work if she were. The fact that one man can kill another in a state of rage shows that even ‘ordinary’ men have urges they sometimes can’t control. Eli’s urges are just of a different intensity and driven by her instinct to survive (as are most of our own urges.) I make no attempt to separate the Good Eli from the Bad Eli. I just believe they can, under the right circumstances, realistically coexist in a civilized world.

[Siggdalos]

Welcome to the forum, Dietz. It is always nice to see a new arrival with so much to say. I hope you'll stick around.

And here we have to go into a little more detail. Especially with her as a main protagonist, the red theme and the related fashionable appearance are treated in much more detail and nuance - in line with her further development and the change in her relationship with the boy. [...]

A lot of interesting points in this breakdown, especially about the cube colors, which is something I've never seen brought up before.

If we take a closer look at the narrative arc, we are immediately struck by similarities to the classic fairy tale scheme so we are obviously on the right track. Let's try to explain the whole story - and with it this last meeting - with a fairy tale analogy. [...]

Also enjoyed this comparison a lot. Would Håkan then perhaps be the princess' old, failed knight, or maybe a dragon guarding the princess in her dreary tower cell (apartment)?

There are no limits to imagination. Why many people lack exactly that imagination at this very point (after all, they have been approving of the "vampire" inventiveness of the script throughout the entire film) and are so determined to predict a pessimistic future for our two little heroes is beyond me.

I think it's largely a desire to remain in line with what we see in the film. There's a magical element, but it's not the case that anything can happen. One can map the story to a fairy tale (or Shakespeare or Ovid or whathaveyou), but it's still framed by a setting where every aspect of Eli's condition (as well as every decision the characters make) have very down-to-earth and practical consequences. Why do vampires have to be invited? I don't know, they just do, but here's how they have to live around it and here's the issues that happen if they don't. One is free to imagine a wizard swooping in and curing Eli five minutes after they step off the train, but then one would have to ground that in the world as well somehow.

To me, Håkan (in the film) serves the role of mentor who supports the protagonist. This is from the classic "The Hero's Journey" story architecture. [...] --- Yet for LtROI this gets applied in an inverted manner - as the story is much like a broken fairy tale. [...]

You know, for all the talk of the film as a fairy tale (in general, not this review specifically), I'd never considered it from the angle of Eli as the protagonist. That's something new for me to chew on, so thanks for that.

The film apparently doesn’t follow the book in showing him in any malicious way, that’s a good thing. One may even feel sorry for him.

I've personally always thought of him as a rather tragic character, even in the book. It's entirely possible I'm being too charitable toward him and buying into his internal justifications too uncritically, since in terms of his actions he is of course a horrible person. But then, so is Eli.

In an old discussion here someone imagined him as the "Mr. Bean of the Hit men". This is certainly true as a comedic aspect of his role in failing to support the girl.

Worth noting that this description comes from TA himself on the Swedish director's commentary, in which he and JAL take the piss out of a lot of scenes.

In that matter i have but just one point of criticism, even more so the director mentioned it in his commentary: the short scene showing the girl evidently morally hurt by the fatal results of her feeding upon humans (Jocke). That in fact is exactly such kind of two-seconds-scene which threatens to undermine the main plot by adding unnecessary and misleading layers to the film.
And as proof we just have to dig a little in this forum - endless and in my opinion moot discussions about the ethical impacts of being a vampire. Not that the director could have prevented this discussion from happening, but to support it - even if only unintentionally - by leaving this scene in the final film, was indeed a mistake.

To me, If Eli hadn't cried after she killed Jocke, it would have been out of character. It also would have given support to those poor, misguided folks who think she was manipulating poor Oskar.

I disagree. I think it's entirely in character at least for JAL's Eli to not care. JAL's screenplay does not have him crying; the closest thing is that it describes his face expressing "a great, tormented satisfaction" afterward. Later when talking to Håkan, he is seemingly indifferent both about what he's done and toward Håkan who has to clean it up (20th Anniversary Edition, pg. 569-571). But for what it's worth, JAL says on the UK commentary that he liked the change.

Because in my original story Eli doesn’t really feel that kind of remorse. Eli is a more, not evil, but a less light character in the original story. But still when I saw this, because this isn’t in the script, Eli sinking down afterwards I really, really liked it. The way it was portrayed.

Personally, I think it was necessary to add something to TA's Eli, to make up for the omission of his other, sympathy-building sides from the novel (i.e. his origin and his childishness), but I think that him crying over a victim feels out of tune.

I would also agree with Dietz that trying to morally justify vampirism is a both futile and not particularly interesting exercise, in my opinion.

To that end i believe the vampire "archetype" is not the best choice for any "serious" fiction as it represents and carries this unsolvable issue. Why not use a superhuman girl without morale impasse? (which for me by the way would make - like for you - everything else more plausible) Probably because the director (and in that matter the audience) needs an easy, common and familiar explanation for her supernatural abilities, like for a werewolf or a unicorn. If he wanted to create something new he would need to explain everything (background, abilities, etc.) from scratch. He didn't had that intention nor the means - it would have damaged the film beyond recognition.

Respectfully, I think this is approaching it from the wrong direction. Along with everything else that it is, LTROI is, fundamentally, a violent horror film about a vampire inserted into a realistic setting. Almost everything else in the plot and themes grows from there. In adapting the story, certainly one could've chosen to make Eli an alien or a superhero without any need for killing. As-is, there's always to some extent going to be an unresolvable conflict between the magical and the realistic, and between the horror and the innocent romance, but to me that's the point. The contrast and tension is what makes the story interesting.

[Dietz]

Hello Siggdalos, thank you for the welcome and also for reminding me that it's a horror movie too, i nearly lost sight of that by concentrating on the evolving story. Exactly, there's always something that doesn't add up when bringing mundane and supernatural things together, so i should try not to overanalyze everything. And that said, i still can't connect a lovely twelve year old with a vampire who was murdering for 200 years. Reality dictates (me) different. (Just to think of soldiers coming back after just 2 years service on the battlefield - many traumatized and scarred for life.) But then again one has to distinguish fiction from reality and everybody has a different take on horror and fantasy stories - a thousand readers, a thousand opinions.
And yes, thanks for the correction with the commentary, i mixed that up, i was listening to both before i wrote the review and i really liked them, these two guys were so nice and relaxed. I was almost disappointed when they had to stop talking at the end of the movie.

Regarding Håkan - apparently a lot of viewers take a special interest in him for some reason.
In a fairy tale however his role would be quite obvious to me (since the vampire issue isn't really a part of it): Of course he would be the kind-hearted and worried father of the princess, the wise king, who - unable to help her - sends messengers throughout the realm in order to find healers or adventurers alike who might be of use. And of course (as usual in fairy tales) he promises half of his kingdom and the hand of his daughter to the one who can free her of this terrible curse.

I couldn't let go of this whole morale issue and after i gave it some further thoughts it ocurred to me that the director was apparently aware of it himself in a general way.
At first i didn't noticed it as my thoughts were primarily revolving around our two main actors. But now that my attention was turning towards the story background and supporting casts i could see the answer to one of my own questions: Why did he expand the story and "wasted" time on side stories like showing a burning vampire or the blood collection from victims, the bullying scenes (argh, i can't watch these) or the boy visiting his father.
Yes clearly, he wanted to show the audience several necessary aspects of the vampire genre and the boy's life and that is as what it's been mostly understood. Still i was wondering (after all the movie has so much symbolism, so many hidden meanings, parables and metaphors) if there was more to all of this. (I'm still curious about the magical egg by the way, it can't just represent the girl, it would be too simple.)

So, while I was racking my brain about how the vampire's moral dilemma could fit a real-life situation i compared it to a, i must admit, quite simple and obvious situation: If we were given the choice, what would we decide on a deserted island with shipwrecked people: survive as cannibals or perish? A tough decision, especially when you know what "real" hunger means, not just a two-day fasting. I'm pretty sure there's even movies/books about it.
And then i remembered one character - Virginia. She is actually the one who is going a different path than the girl. The moment she realizes that her survival depends on killing people she decides to end her own life. And that in fact makes her (to my knowledge) the one human in this movie with the highest and most truly ethical principles, something like Nietzsche's homo superior - a faraway dream of an ideal human.

From Virginia (the name says it all) we come to the gang in the Chinese restaurant the "Nobel Prize Committee" (as the director puts it) or basically all depicted adults in the movie: complete indifference - we don't know anything about them or there values - nothing to get here. Key scene at the lake: Larry walks past deep-frozen Jocke in the background, stops, takes an empty look at him and walks on unimpressed.

With these findings we are probably intrigued how to judge Håkan. It seems he is the rather opposite of Virginia. Unfortunately we have only very limited information about him in the film and that is all we are allowed to use. What we know for sure is that he - bare of any emotions - kills people for the girl and is putting her life over his own. He doesn't kill for fun, he kills like a craftsman or better like a failed apprentice, an amateur - but and above all:
he kills without necessity, unlike the girl. I'm pretty sure his role was inspired by the count's (well known) loyal subordinate - Igor. In a way we could even compare him to poor Virginia: he is not giving himself up for the greater ethics but instead he is void of this ethics and is doing everything for the girl. As to why, we could only speculate. In a way admirable and pitiable at the same time, if it weren't for the atrocities.
But there's more.

If we follow this downward spiral of decaying ethic behavior we inevitable and finally end up with the scum, the scourge of the earth - the bullies and torturers of the boy. They know morale well, they are able to distuingish between good and bad, they know the social codex and they know exactly what they're doing. And they're enjoying it like sadists. They are the real opposite side to Virginia.

With that in mind one could argue about where, if possible at all, to put the girls morale position relative to the other figures. Maybe she is not that bad after all - and meanwhile we are still ruminating about our decision regarding the island...

Cheers from Dietz

[Dietz]

JAL’s vampire, at least in Eli’s case, can’t be an indifferent killer of humans as were Dracula et al., simply because the love story couldn’t work if she were.

One can map the story to a fairy tale (or Shakespeare or Ovid or whathaveyou), but it's still framed by a setting where every aspect of Eli's condition (as well as every decision the characters make) have very down-to-earth and practical consequences.

This. Exactly that's one example on how the clash of fiction and reality brings up impossible morale and logical problems. For me a "real" 200 year old vampire with human feelings, true morale and ethic beliefs is
a) either dead because of suicide (like Virginia)
or b) becomes insane sooner or later because of it's unbearable 200-year killing spree
or c) becomes completely morally and ethically twisted like a sadist or a psycho killer
It's implausible for it to stay a tender, loving and vulnerable morale being and left to cry every time it has killed. That's why i have fundamental problems with the vampire "archetype" especially in our love story. It makes the girls character less credible. Either she is an ice-cold killer without morale and remorse or she is an innocent, sensitive twelve year old girl with human ethics and feelings - but not both. In the first case the love story wouldn't work, in the second the whole vampire theme isn't fitting.
And here comes the moment of common sense. We have to make concessions to the author, we need to distinguish between important and unimportant elements. We want him to progress his story and to that end we are willing (to a varying amount) to accept certain inconsistencies to see where he is going with all of this. It basically happens all the time, because we are mostly consuming works of fiction and not documentaries or scientific content.
But especially here, with a mix of such extreme genres, it is hard to make this concessions because they are basically ruling each other out (like "the legend of the honest politician" or "the fairy tale of the printer that simply worked"). We cannot completely let go of logic, otherwise the story doesn't make sense anymore and consequently becomes meaningless. Same applies to the happy ending problem. We are "conditioned" by the inherent story logic to foresee a bleak future and not a Happy Ending. The vampire typus has certain rules attached to it - these rules are preventing (in a logical sense) a happy future for the kids and for me they're tainting a parallel love story.

Cheers from Dietz

[Siggdalos]

Regarding Håkan - apparently a lot of viewers take a special interest in him for some reason.

I think this is simply because he's the most ambiguous character. All the others' motivations are fairly straightforward, whereas he's both the one that raises the most questions at a glance and the one who's explained the least within the film. It's explained in the novel, of course, but there I still find him to be one of the more complex and interesting characters.

But now that my attention was turning towards the story background and supporting casts i could see the answer to one of my own questions: Why did he expand the story and "wasted" time on side stories like showing a burning vampire or the blood collection from victims, the bullying scenes (argh, i can't watch these) or the boy visiting his father.
Yes clearly, he wanted to show the audience several necessary aspects of the vampire genre and the boy's life and that is as what it's been mostly understood. Still i was wondering (after all the movie has so much symbolism, so many hidden meanings, parables and metaphors) if there was more to all of this.

Because those are in the book, and the book's as much about a society in a specific time and place as it is about the three leads.

(I'm still curious about the magical egg by the way, it can't just represent the girl, it would be too simple.)

JAL explained his thinking behind that on this forum once (the novel version, in which the egg is described quite differently, but I think his reasoning is also applicable to the film since naturally he had a reason to keep it in the screenplay):

As far as I know I had no specific symbolism in mind when choosing the image of the egg. The egg was just supposed to be another version of the Rubiks Cube, but with dilligence rather than intelligence needed to solve it. It´s main function was to illustrate the amount of time that Eli has on his hands, how many empty hours spent putting this puzzle together. And also, of course, to represent an object of great value as a hint of Eli´s ambigous past.
But there is usually a reason for why you chose an image, even if that reason can be beyond your own comprehending. An image just seems perfectly right, and this feeling comes from the fact that it is multilayered and open for interpretation. So any or all of your ideas could be a subconscious reason for why I chose that particular image.

From Virginia (the name says it all) we come to the gang in the Chinese restaurant the "Nobel Prize Committee" (as the director puts it) or basically all depicted adults in the movie: complete indifference - we don't know anything about them or there values - nothing to get here. Key scene at the lake: Larry walks past deep-frozen Jocke in the background, stops, takes an empty look at him and walks on unimpressed.

I'm not sure I agree with this assessment. I think the film treats the gang with a fair amount of sympathy and dignity, in their own way, though again that could be because I'm mainly colored by the novel.

I'm pretty sure his role was inspired by the count's (well known) loyal subordinate - Igor.

Not to be a smartass again, but Igor is from Universal's Frankenstein films. Dracula's minion is Renfield. And JAL indeed compared Håkan to a kind of Renfield in his notes for the novel, specifically when figuring out how to rework the character from his first unrecognizable iteration into the version we know (Misslyckas igen, misslyckas bättre, pg. 27).

Also, the film's Eli doesn't mention how many years he's been alive beyond "a very long time". The 200 years figure is only in the novel.

[gkmoberg1]

To me, Håkan (in the film) serves the role of mentor who supports the protagonist. This is from the classic "The Hero's Journey" story architecture. [...] --- Yet for LtROI this gets applied in an inverted manner - as the story is much like a broken fairy tale. [...]

You know, for all the talk of the film as a fairy tale (in general, not this review specifically), I'd never considered it from the angle of Eli as the protagonist. That's something new for me to chew on, so thanks for that.

Not Eli as _the_ protagonist for the story but as a protagonist. My point of view was to see the story as having two protagonists (E&O). We often talk of Oskar, sure, but consider Eli as protagonist: Eli's quest is, well, to have a true friend (even though Eli does not know this at the start of the story), specifically to gain Oskar as a true friend. The antagonist force blocking Eli is the vampirism. The "point of no return" for Eli's is when Eli "wakes up" to seeing Oskar as not another /person/child/meal-option/. Eli starts off the relationship with "we can't be friends :slams shut the door to apt building entrance:". But then Eli "wakes up" in finding how valuable friendship with Oskar would be. There is no retreating from this discovery. Failure becomes a life-or-death want by Eli, in terms of emotional survival (of course Eli would survive losing Oskar, but Eli without Oskar results in an Eli reduced to a state wherein Eli has no valuable future and is in full realization of this ... this is an emotional death (the vampirism has won!). For Eli, the darkest moment is the point of near defeat... Eli is forced to leave. The effects of the vampirism have yielded a step-wise development across the movie where Eli cannot remain, must sacrifice the relationship, and must flee. The climax, then, for Eli is the return - which happens to coincide with the pool scene ... And so, while the film centers on Oskar, looking over his shoulder throughout, and while he has his own quest as a protagonist, he is not the movie's only storyline. Eli's counts as well.

[Dietz]

Regarding Håkan - apparently a lot of viewers take a special interest in him for some reason.

I think this is simply because he's the most ambiguous character. All the others' motivations are fairly straightforward, whereas he's both the one that raises the most questions at a glance and the one who's explained the least within the film. It's explained in the novel, of course, but there I still find him to be one of the more complex and interesting characters.

I agree. "Good" or "Evil" figures are pretty much predictable in their actions. The characters who are indecisive, mischievous or burdened with inner conflicts are interesting. That's why I find most superhero films rather boring.

About the side stories: I'm not so sure they're "just" in the movie because they were in the book, and you probably didn't mean that. Of course they somehow had to be in the book to appear later in the movie, but after all, the screenwriter cut the novel down to 240 pages and then condensed it all down to 90 pages again and then he and the director sat down and changed a lot until they were both happy (at least that's how I understood the process). In that light, both must have seen something special in these stories to keep them.

The magical puzzle egg: Sigh, I was really hoping there was something more to this. But like the screenwriter said, maybe we'll come up with something new at some point.

The Restaurant Gang: These guys are portrayed as friendly and social, I agree. The problem is that we never get any insight into their actions that tells us anything about their moral code. Nobody alerts the police, even though Jocke was Lacke's friend, they just sit together and complain about the world's problems. They pursue Virginia and Lacke not because of their argument, but because Lacke left his lighter behind. They are not really interested in Hakan, but rather in the chance of him giving a round. Instead of comforting Virginia in the hospital Lacke talks about money.

Renfield: I've actually red that name a few times on the forum, but I always thought it was another character from the book. Over the years, of course, I've watched a few vampire/frankenstein movies and Igor was the only name I remembered (wrong apparently). I'm not "particularly" into horror, vampire, or romance stories, but this here movie stood out in my opinion, along with the Roman Polanski classic. And please, by all means, correct me and throw your facts at me, I find it interesting. I must've picked these "200 years" up in the forum somewhere, correct, there's no hint about it in the film.

Cheers from Dietz

[Dietz]

The effects of the vampirism have yielded a step-wise development across the movie where Eli cannot remain, must sacrifice the relationship, and must flee. The climax, then, for Eli is the return - which happens to coincide with the pool scene ... And so, while the film centers on Oskar, looking over his shoulder throughout, and while he has his own quest as a protagonist, he is not the movie's only storyline. Eli's counts as well.

I was thinking about the pool ending and came up with some questions. For instance what happened to the girl while she was away and what made her come back? Why didn't she just grab the boy by the arm and disappeared with him on the train? And of course, was it really a coincidence when she finally showed up at the indoor swimming pool? And why she'd dismember the bad guys?
Sadly we don't have any further substantial information about her after leaving him, even her re-appearance in the swimming pool is limited to the sound of her breaking through a window and the deadly results of her intervention and finally her smiling face.
This leaves us with a lot of room for speculation, (which I find rather uncomfortable) if we want to fill in the gaps. Let's try it anyway out of curiosity.

Due to the film's fairly clear emphasis on the love story, I think we can abstract most of the fantasy-horror theme as an aid for explanation here and concentrate exclusively on the children's connection. As far as the girl's feelings and thoughts are concerned, we can be fairly certain that we, more or less, just have to mirror the boy's emotional world to know what it looks like inside her.
From a purely structural-narrative point of view, the story cannot be over when she leaves, since there's still her "unresolved" promise to help him.

As for the question of the girl's lone escape, we must take into account the last situation together with her boy. The event is very reminiscent of the usual scenes in which the angry peasants gather with torches and pitchforks in front of the count's castle gate and angrily demand his immediate exile. In our case, this is illustrated by the upset knocking of the neighbor. Police sirens or similar could have probably been used, but the urgency and lack of alternatives of the situation becomes clear anyway: there is no other way out than immediate separation and departure.
If we consider that and her history with the boy, she very likely went into hiding and always kept a close eye on him. There was no need to make up her mind about anything nor did she ever intend to leave him for real.

If we follow our last assumption we can pretty much disprove the coincidence of her showing up in the right moment at the indoor swimming pool as she most certainly was watching over him all the (night)time.
Fortunately, there was still her promise, which served as a convenient excuse to show up, completely by chance of course. (She probably would never openly admit to him that she had missed him. Let's not make a mountain out of a tree.)

The final "encounter" between our two main characters (not counting the epilogue) represents a break with the narrative up to that point. Basically, it is not a meeting of the two in the traditional sense, but a variation, or rather the "culmination" of the boy's torture scenes depicted so far. It is also a complete reversal of their previous roles: the girl now plays the active part and the boy is passive.
I wasn't sure anymore and had to check it again, but both screenwriter and director - like Oskar - had problems with bullies at school. I'm sure that played an important role in writing the script. Obviously the two of them were speaking (in the commentary) with some malicious glee about the dead villains lying about at the end. That makes the girl represent their very private display of a late revenge.
That said i don't think her appearance has the same meaning in regard to the boy (in a real life situation this naturally could be a revenge fantasy) because at this point in the story, he has already grown past that and probably feels more sorry for the bullies than he hates them.

To understand the ending, we have to speculate about the girl's past. The way she gave him advice on how to deal with the bullies at school suggests that she herself had (many times) found herself in similar situations.
We can conclude that the boy is not only her great love, in a way he represents her former self. She knows exactly what will happen to him if she does not intervene now.
In that final moment, when his life is in danger, she becomes a “flash in the night”, a relentless Paladin who strikes down on his enemies with righteous fury.
Now we can perhaps understand her unusual violence: she is not only concerned with keeping her promise to the boy (scaring away the tormentors would have sufficed) or with dispensing justice for what they did and wanted to do to him. She also enacts retribution for what was done to her by the likes of them. So she not simply kills the evildoers, but rips them apart in boundless anger to make her point.
(Or she just wants to prove to the boy that if he hits back hard enough, they'll stop doing their stupid things.)

Cheers from Dietz