The Innocents — The Sinister Flip Side of Childhood Under the Nordic Sun’s Relentless Glare

The Innocents: full review

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Nordic cinema has an unhealthy obsession with childhood as a territory of shadows, as if Bergman and Dreyer had left behind a legacy of childhood trauma so dense that even the most mediocre directors feel the need to wallow in it. Eskil Vogt, known until now as Joachim Trier’s screenwriter (the man who films existential melancholy with overwhelming sensitivity), decides it’s his moment to establish himself on his own and gives us The Innocents (De uskyldige), a film that breathes the antiseptic atmosphere of the suburbs, of thick wool coats and of that uncomfortable silence broken only by the creak of psychological tension under the weight of childhood loneliness. It isn’t a commercial film about kids with superpowers in the usual sense, but a brilliant, uncomfortable exploration of early morality that handles psychological horror with millimetric precision. And it succeeds, fully consciously, like a surgeon dissecting child psychology to see what happens when the filters of adult supervision are removed. Because, let’s be honest, The Innocents makes its disturbing reflection on the cruelty inherent in childhood crystal clear, a devastating stylistic exercise in which the director deliberately unsettles the viewer while the adults, sunk in their own grey realities, are unable to see the abyss opening before their eyes. It’s the kind of film that grabs you completely, more than justifying every one of the 117 minutes it demands of your life.

The setting is a Norwegian housing estate during the bright Nordic summer, a place where concrete blocks contrast with the surrounding nature and playgrounds become the laboratory for an unsettling suburban fable. Here, the children play at being lesser gods, moving objects with their minds, communicating telepathically and generally behaving like a realistic, raw and deeply disturbing version of mutants without a moral compass. Rakel Lenora Fløttum masterfully plays Ida, a girl grappling with frustration and with the discovery that her older sister Anna (an impressive Alva Brynsmo Ramstad), who has regressive autism, begins to show extraordinary psychic abilities when she comes into contact with other kids from the neighborhood, like the sensitive Ben (Sam Ashraf) and the empathetic Aisha (Mina Yasmin Asheim). What begins as a shared childhood fascination quickly turns into a spiral of violence, domination and morally devastating cruelty. Far from cold or detached, the film is so suffocating and magnetic that the horror seeps into your bones; it keeps you glued to the screen, completely unable to look away from the fragility of corrupted innocence.

The great strength of The Innocents lies precisely in its premise and in Eskil Vogt’s narrative pulse; he shows superb maturity behind the camera by prioritizing psychological truth over visual effect. Far from creating empty atmospheres, Vogt slowly simmers an unbearable tension in broad daylight. The cinematography by Sturla Brandth Grøvlen — responsible for the vibrant, immersive Victoria (2015), shot in a single prodigious take — is simply tremendous, capturing the overexposure of the summer sun with a strangely warm yet desolate palette that makes the everyday surroundings feel hostile. That overwhelming formal beauty boosts a very harsh narrative substance: the unintentional neglect of adults. The parents aren’t careless extras but realistic figures, tired and overwhelmed by daily life, which makes the children’s helplessness and the depth of their dynamics painfully believable. Vogt uses moral ambiguity not as a pretentious hiding place but as a relentless mirror of childhood, delivering a rounded, mature and masterfully executed work.

And then there’s the brilliant treatment of the psychic gifts. Far from Hollywood pyrotechnics, telekinesis and telepathy are filmed here with the barest realism, which exponentially multiplies their power to disturb. The children manipulate their surroundings with palpable physical and mental effort, stripped of any epic or heroism; it’s a raw, intimate and dangerous extension of their childish rages and frustrations. It’s as if the supernatural backdrop merged with social drama, where the real chill doesn’t come from a digital monster but from watching the ethical malleability of a nine-year-old mind discovering the power to do real harm around it. The tension is dosed with superb mastery, so that a simple shot of a cat on a flight of stairs or a fixed stare in the playground chills your blood far more than any conventional scare. It’s a brilliant cinematic sociological experiment, where silences weigh heavily and every action has devastating physical and emotional consequences.

For all these reasons, The Innocents stands as one of the most powerful, disturbing and memorable works of contemporary genre cinema. It has all the ingredients and squeezes them to the max: a claustrophobic atmosphere under the sun, a bold premise and an absolutely prodigious child cast whose performances burn into your retina. Eskil Vogt isn’t after easy festival applause but wants to shake the viewer’s foundations through genuine, uncomfortable, visceral emotion. It’s the triumph of auteur cinema applied to psychological horror, proving you can be deeply artistic, visually impeccable and narratively devastating at the same time. In the end, The Innocents establishes itself as a mature, compact and brave work that respects the audience’s intelligence and tackles loneliness and human cruelty with unforgettable rawness. A contemporary masterpiece that, far from leaving you indifferent, stays with you long after the lights come up.

Direction: The Art of Making the Supernatural Look Like a BBC Documentary

If there’s one thing Eskil Vogt masters, it’s rooting the extraordinary in the most absolute everydayness, making telepathy and telekinesis feel dangerously real in the parks of a Norwegian housing estate. His direction is sober, restrained and of a clinical hyperrealism, keeping just the right distance to film moral drama and supernatural horror without ever tipping into melodrama or cheap scares. The held shots and static staging give the film an overwhelming authenticity, building an atmosphere so tangible it hurts, trapping the viewer in the helplessness of those children who operate on the margins of the adult universe.

Far from diluting the horror, this stylistic restraint makes it unbearable. When the children explore the limits of their abilities and cross dangerous moral lines, they do so with that mix of blind curiosity and heedlessness typical of childhood. Vogt explores his young protagonists’ motivations with tremendous lucidity, reminding us that childhood cruelty often stems from undeveloped empathy rather than abstract evil. Vogt’s cinema beats with overwhelming inner force thanks to its psychological honesty; it’s a film that forces you to stare straight into the abyss of broken innocence, leaving a residue of anguish and fascination that’s hard to shake.

Sturla Brandth Grøvlen’s cinematography is without doubt one of the production’s high points. The exterior shots, capturing the endless light of the Nordic summer, create a brilliant, disturbing contrast with the darkness of the events. This isn’t a cold tourism ad but a lesson in visual storytelling in which naturalistic light becomes the perfect canvas for a suffocating psychological thriller. The beauty of the images heightens the vulnerability of bodies in space, proving that aesthetic excellence can — and should — serve a devastating story.

Actors: Prodigious Children and Painfully Real Adults

The child cast of The Innocents is the true miracle of the show. The children, led by the tremendous Rakel Lenora Fløttum (Ida) and Alva Brynsmo Ramstad (Anna), give overwhelming performances that become the emotional heart of the plot. Fløttum handles a magnetic, complex expressiveness, moving between jealousy, guilt and courage, while Ramstad offers a deeply respectful, complex and brilliant portrait of an autistic girl who finds in the psychic bond a way to communicate. The adults, far from flat, precisely reflect parents’ everyday blindness; the magnificent Ellen Dorrit Petersen, as Ida and Anna’s mother, brings an extra layer of truth and vulnerability to a family dynamic worn down by the strain of caregiving.

Vogt’s script shines precisely because of its minimalism and its trust in purely cinematic storytelling. The dialogue is sparse because the children don’t need to verbalize the complexity of what they discover; their looks, silences and physical interactions say absolutely everything. The silence in this film is charged with suffocating psychological tension, perfectly capturing how children communicate and isolate themselves when adults aren’t watching. There’s no banality at all, but a subtle, tense and brilliantly developed exploration of power, empathy and the consequences of our actions at the earliest age.

Technical Side: When Production Design Heightens Suburban Realism

The film’s production design is impeccable and plays a crucial narrative role. Setting the story in a real housing estate on the outskirts, surrounded by thick forest, creates a perfect contrast between the rigidity of modern architecture and the hidden mysteries of nature and of the human mind. The minimalist, functional interiors aren’t a mere decor catalog but the reflection of a crushing domestic normality that accentuates the characters’ isolation and gives the film an utterly believable atmosphere of urban everydayness.

Pessi Levanto’s score is another work of subtle art. Far from the genre’s usual shrillness, the music intertwines with the magnificent sound design, using hums, subtle dissonances and almost imperceptible frequencies that get under the viewer’s skin. It’s a composition designed to amplify the children’s inner psychological tension, working organically and masterfully as an amplifier of the psychic energy unfolding on screen.

The editing, by Jens Christian Fodstad, shows a prodigious inner rhythm. It knows when to hold a gaze to unsettle and when to ramp up the tension in moments of mental confrontation. This unhurried, deeply considered editing is what makes the final climax in the playground feel like one of the tensest, most memorable and most cinematically pure sequences in recent genre cinema. Every shot flows with a masterful sense of silent urgency.

The best

• Dazzling cinematography: Sturla Brandth Grøvlen’s work is tremendous, using the overexposed light of the Nordic summer to create a daytime horror that is hypnotic and overwhelmingly beautiful, heightening the characters’ psychological helplessness.
• A prodigious child cast: The performances of Rakel Lenora Fløttum, Alva Brynsmo Ramstad, Sam Ashraf and Mina Yasmin Asheim have an overwhelming maturity and truth; they carry the film’s dramatic weight brilliantly.
• Impeccable direction and script: Eskil Vogt’s precise storytelling tackles morality in childhood with unusual courage, slow-cooking the suspense and always respecting the viewer’s intelligence.
• A realistic treatment of the supernatural: The decision to film the psychic abilities in a raw, physical and intimate way, far from Hollywood fireworks, hits directly at the psychological level.

The worst

• A slow pace not for everyone: Those looking for a festival of commercial jump scares or the fast pace of superhero movies may find its contemplative tempo demanding.
• The harshness of certain scenes: The relentless rawness with which child violence and animal cruelty are portrayed may be excessively disturbing and painful for sensitive viewers.
• The deliberate restraint of the adult characters: Although narratively justified to heighten the children’s isolation, their disconnection may distance those looking for a more conventional family drama.

The Claqueta Ácida Verdict

The Innocents establishes itself as one of the great masterpieces of contemporary genre cinema. Eskil Vogt delivers a rounded, mature and brave work that uses its supernatural backdrop to carry out a devastating psychological X-ray of childhood and the absence of moral guides. Backed by dazzling cinematography, a precise score and child performances bordering on the miraculous, the film grips and disturbs in equal measure, proving that the deepest horror is born from everyday life and from the fragility of our own nature. It’s auteur cinema with a capital A: uncomfortable, fascinating, visually impeccable and narratively relentless. An essential film that dignifies the genre and burns itself into the viewer’s mind. Final score: 8.5, an essential gem of modern psychological horror. 💀