Starring four extraordinarily well cast Norwegian children (Rakel Lenora Fløttum, Alva Brynsmo Ramstad, Sam Ashraf, Mina Yasmin Bremseth)

Written & Directed by Eskil Vogt

Signature Entertainment, In (independent) cinemas now

During a long, bright Nordic summer, a group of children develop dark and mysterious powers when the adults aren’t looking.

I’ve been watching horror films for five decades, and making TV for three so, unsurprisingly, I am rarely, if ever, genuinely scared by anything I see on a screen. I can count the number of movies that actually frighten me on the fingers on one hand, but within two minutes of the opening of Nordic child horror The Innocents I found myself grimacing and saying out loud: ‘This isn’t going to end well’. Luckily, I think the rest of the cinema felt similarly, so no one tutted me.

I spent a good deal of the ensuing two hours peeking at the screen through my fingers. I confess to exclaiming out loud several more times.

The Innocents is a very good film indeed. I’m going to give it 10/10 so you could bail on this review now, go and see it and come back and join the discussion later, because a few spoilers are unavoidable.

Horror is often at its very best when children are at the heart of the story. At the cheesier end we could mention The Omen or The Midwich Cuckoos. Moving up the quality index we come to Let The Right One In, The Babadook and Jack Clayton’s 1961 version of The Turn of the Screw, significantly also called The Innocents. This new Norwegian Innocents makes clear references to all five of those films, but it distinguishes itself in one crucial aspect. In most child horror the juvenile is either the victim, or possessed by some external malign force that corrupts their ‘innocence’ and adds the element of terror and/or threat, i.e. the child is not a child at all, but becomes something ‘other’.

In Eskil Vogt’s movie the four children are simply children, as truthfully drawn as you would find in a social realist film such as Sean Baker’s brilliant Florida Project. If you haven’t seen The Florida Project, then I heartily recommend it as a companion piece to The Innocents because in many ways Baker’s film is very similar, only without murderous superpowers. In both, the children aren’t ciphers as they are in so many other movies; they aren’t manifestations of adult loss, insecurity or fear. They are simply children, doing what children do, which can be kind or malign, but coming from a purposefully uncorrupted space, challenging our very preconceptions about what ‘innocence’ is. In this respect, The Innocents is one of the most honest films about childhood I can remember seeing.

As to what makes this such a riveting and disturbing watch, there is some moderate violence, some extremely subtle use of CGI, one or two jump scares, but what unsettles the viewer throughout is the lawless (i.e. innocent) nature of the infant psyche given the power to do terrible acts. It’s also worth noting that in British and American cinema there are certain things a child being a child simply won’t do, and things that just won’t happen to them. Vogt isn’t bothered with any of that namby-pamby nonsense so we soon learn that pretty much anything is on the cards. Sometimes they are very small things, almost petty, but the transgressions seem huge. Perhaps as a parent I felt them more, but I’d be surprised if most people weren’t pretty wigged out, largely because it is so ‘real’, so mundane.

Of course, what seals the deal, is the quality of the acting. The young performers are perfectly cast, and brilliantly directed. You don’t doubt them as children for a second.

The Innocents is not a perfect film. There are structural flaws, and one or two plot holes and loose ends, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen (even with my hands in front of them) and I didn’t check my watch once. I will make sure to see it again very soon, and I am sure it will haunt me for a long time. Flawed or not, very few films do that to me so I’m sticking with the top score.

My film of 2022 so far. 10/10

Martin Jameson