The Innocents

With his second feature as writer-director, Eskil Vogt delves into a world of pre-teen evil.

Eskil Vogt has already made his name as a screenwriter having collaborated on no less than five features in that capacity with Joachim Trier including the recently acclaimed The Worst Person in the World. But it is The Innocents, the second feature which he has written for himself to direct, which will make his name as a filmmaker. Its predecessor, 2014’s Blind, did receive acclaim from some but this new piece is surely on a higher level altogether. It could become a classic horror film of the 21st century although to put it simply in that category is to do it less than justice.

Back in 1957 John Wyndham wrote The Midwich Cuckoos, a story about children with supernatural powers which has yielded more than one screen adaptation. There, however, the genre was science fiction and the evil children were products of another planet. The four children who are at the centre of The Innocents prove to have psychic powers, abilities that range from moving objects by telekinesis to being able to hear the thoughts of their playmates. However, all of them have normal families: 9-year-old Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløttum) and her slightly older autistic sister, Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad), live in Norway with their parents (Morten Svartveit and Ellen Dorrit Petersen, the latter being the real-life mother of the young actress playing Ida). Ben (Sam Ashraf) and Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim) have different ethnic backgrounds and are both children being brought up in the absence of their fathers by a single mother but these four, all of them being under twelve years of age, form their own little group.

The powers that they have will build during the course of the film and reach a stage at which Ben is capable of taking over the minds of strangers and making them kill people. That explains why The Innocents can be categorised as a horror film. The fact that the four young players handle their roles with complete conviction and are working with a script by Vogt which renders all four characters totally believable does not in itself take the movie out of the horror category. But in addition the film breaks the standard rules of the genre by moving at a relatively slow pace, especially in its first half, yet that only serves to make the film more truly disturbing. The games played by the children when out together in the woods gradually reveal their supernatural powers but they emerge from the kind of play that echoes everybody's childhood experiences. Consequently, when Ben's powers which are the strongest become a threat to his playmates we are really concerned for their safety (a very different situation from that which pertains so often in horror films where the potential victims are just there ready to be slaughtered rather than fully credible human beings).

It is not only the acting and the characterisations that make The Innocents special. In creating a world in which everyday reality is linked to something abnormal and menacing growing beneath the surface, Vogt is helped by a magnificent music score by Pessi Levanto which features a highly original orchestration and knows exactly to what extent it needs to be felt: it creates a sense of unease without ever becoming too dominant. The film’s realistic side is potent enough for the audience to regard the tale that it tells as a kind of allegory: an exploration of human nature which invites us to ponder the loss of innocence.

Ida as the central figure has to come to terms with discovering that Ben is capable of evil. This could be interpreted as the story of a child reaching the age in which it becomes apparent that there is evil in the world, evil which can corrupt innocence. But if in Rakel Lenora Fløttum’s performance Ida comes across as the epitome of innocence that may be misleading. Despite giving that impression most of the time we see her early on delighting in pinching her mute autistic sister as hard as possible. Take that into account and The Innocents might well be a work sharing the outlook of William Golding’s classic novel Lord of the Flies which suggests that virtually all human beings are inherently susceptible to embracing violence. Whichever interpretation you put on The Innocents, it certainly invites deep contemplation of the roots of evil behaviour. Its climax is, perhaps, rather too much of a set-piece and there is at least one instance later on of the film deliberately misleading the audience over an act of impending violence. These are but minor flaws, however.  This is a rewarding, thought-provoking work and one that if judged as a horror film includes a brilliant sequence which knows that what disturbs the most is to turn a source of safety and protection into something that has unknowingly become deadly.

Original title: De uskyldige.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Cast: Rakel Lenora Fløttum, Alva Brynsmo Ramstad, Sam Ashraf, Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim, Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Morten Svartveit, Kadra Yusuf, Lisa Tønne, Irina Eidsvold Tøien.

Dir Eskil Vogt, Pro Maria Ekerhovd, Misha Jaari and Mark Lwoff, Screenplay Eskil Vogt, Ph Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, Pro Des Simone Grau Roney, Ed Jens Christian Fodstad, Music Pessi Levanto, Costumes Marianne Sembsmoën.

Mer Film/Zentropa International Sweden/Bufo/Snowglobe/Don’t Look Now/Film i Väst/Logical Pictures-Signature Entertainment.
117 mins. Norway/Sweden/Denmark/Finland/France/UK. 2021. US Rel: 13 May 2022. UK Rel: 20 May 2022. Cert. 15.