Film Review: The Innocents unfolds like the best story Stephen King never wrote

Morten Svartveit in The Innocents. Image: Signature Entertainment

★★★★★

Set on a Norwegian housing complex, which is a strange blend of pastoral setting and brutalist architecture, The Innocents (15A) opens in a rather disturbing fashion when the angelic-looking Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløttum), bored on her summer holidays, begins pinching her autistic older sister Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramst), safe in the knowledge that Anna can’t protest or cry out.

When Ida meets the young Ben (Sam Ashraf), who appears to have telekinetic powers, she realises that she isn’t alone in experiencing the impulse to inflict pain; but just as we begin to fear for Anna’s safety, their young neighbour Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bremse) begins to mysteriously communicate with the previously locked-in Anna.

Sam AShraf, Rakel Lenora Fløttum. Image: ©Mer Film

Written and directed by Eskil Vogt, The Innocents unfolds like the best story Stephen King never wrote: as the quartet begin to explore the full extent of their untapped potential, unburdened by morality and heedless of consequences, a nerve-shredding story unfolds, not least because it’s virtually impossible to anticipate what might come next.

What renders the film genuinely chilling, however, is the disconnect between their outwardly cherubic appearances and the horrific acts the children are capable of perpetrating. All four child actors turn in excellent performances, with Rakel Lenora Fløttum simply stunning as the story’s emotional fulcrum.

Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim in The Innocents. Image: Signature Entertainment

Brilliantly shot from a child’s-eye perspective by cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, The Innocents is a very clever take on the horror genre and one of the most unusual and challenging mainstream movies you’ll see this year. Cat lovers, on the other hand, might want to avoid.

(cinema release)