The Innocents Review: Intelligent & Horrifying Genre Tale Leaves A Mark
The superhero genre is so popular and so well codified that it's easy to forget what it can feel like with a genuinely fresh perspective. It's possible to watch The Innocents (De uskyldige in the original Norwegian) and not see it in those terms, of course. There are no capes or costumes, no blockbuster action scenes, and really not a whole lot of saving people. But there's something about telling a story with powered individuals that taps into those same, core themes. On the one hand, it's possible to think of this film as a version of 2012's Chronicle without the found-footage element, and focused on much younger, Norwegian-speaking children. On the other, that is an incredibly reductive way to describe a movie that intelligently and empathetically explores what it is to be a child, to have actions with consequences but lack the tools to properly understand them. The Innocents works to keep those two modes, genre film and art film, in stasis, and the resulting movie is one guaranteed to linger in the minds of its viewers for days afterwards.
Written and directed by Eskil Vogt, a 2022 Academy Award nominee for The Worst Person in the World's screenplay, The Innocents follows a small group of children from the same housing complex who become friends over the summer holidays. Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløttum) and Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad) are new to the neighborhood, and the younger Ida seems to resent having to look after her older, autistic sister. Ben (Sam Ashraf) is shunned by the older local boys and seems to show signs of an abusive home-life, while Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim) has a loving mother struggling with sadness, who cries in the kitchen when she thinks her daughter isn't looking. Both come from
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