The Innocents Ditches Coming-of-Age Whimsy for Supernatural Terror

A group of Norwegian children’s summertime reverie is disrupted by the emergence of perturbing psychic powers in Eskil Vogt’s The Innocents. The frequent writing collaborator of director Joachim Trier (with whom he was nominated for the Original Screenplay Oscar for The Worst Person in the World), Vogt is perhaps best known for co-penning Trier’s “Oslo Trilogy,” which came to a close with the recent Norwegian award favorite. Yet The Innocents shares a great deal with the duo’s 2017 effort Thelma, which focuses on a young lesbian who develops telekinetic powers as a response to her oppressive upbringing. But instead of exploring supernatural abilities as a manifestation of trauma, Vogt meditates on the multifaceted (though oft-ignored) frustrations of adolescence. In the debate of nature versus nurture, Thelma posits that a child’s unfortunate upbringing is what exacerbates these otherworldly urges; The Innocents, on the other hand, examines how children’s ingrained personalities might spark these magical capabilities entirely on their own. Already at a disadvantage for sharing a name with a 1961 film that adapts Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, The Innocents manages to conjure unique imagery of troubled youths—but doesn’t necessarily deliver on crafting adequate interiorities for these kids.

The enduring light of Nordic summer penetrates every frame of the film, imbuing The Innocents with a visual brightness that appears eerie in the face of its frightening violent streak (immediately drawing parallels to Ari Aster’s Midsommar). However, as opposed to a pagan death cult, it’s a quartet of children residing in the same Norwegian apartment complex that drives the film’s tense terror. Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløttum) is a reserved towheaded child who moves into a new apartment with her mom (Ellen Dorrit Pedersen), dad (Morten Svartveit) and non-verbal autistic older sister Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad). Feeling neglected due to the constant parental attention Anna receives and resentful over the move, Ida treats her sister with physical cruelty behind her parent’s back. She pinches Anna with determined force, seemingly without consequence because of her sister’s lack of reaction to physical pain. At one point, she even slips shards of glass into Anna’s shoe—the injury only discovered by her parents after they’ve been out all day with their eldest daughter, her sock stained solid crimson at the toe.

Predictably, Ida’s cruel experiments fly right under her parent’s radar, and she’s deemed Anna’s caretaker during the aimless summer days. When visiting the apartment complex’s playground, Ida meets Ben (Sam Ashraf), a boy around her age who lives in the building. Though he’s initially perplexed by Anna’s condition, Ida shows Ben the pinching trick—his fingers clamping her skin with immediate gusto. The two quickly ditch Anna to explore the nearby forest, and Ben shows off a weird talent. Ida drops small objects from above his head; it appears he can move them mid-air, throwing them across the lush grass. When they return for Anna, it turns out she’s made a new friend too. A slightly younger girl named Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim) bears striking vitiligo—and an ability to communicate with Anna despite her verbal limitations. Over the course of the summer, the kids begin to grapple with the potential of their powers, with Anna quickly developing telekinetic abilities of her own. Predictably, some of these kids’ intentions are more noble than others, and what was once a mythically eccentric friend group devolves into a strained conflict that draws blood.

The entirety of the The Innocents’ success rests on its child actors, who must immerse viewers in the disturbing world of their characters while having the film’s scarier details withheld from them by the director. This balancing act proves miraculously successful, particularly when it comes to Ashraf.