Director/Screenplay – Eskil Vogt, Producer – Maria Ekerhovd, Photography – Sturla Brandt Grøvlen, Music – Pessi Levanto, Visual Effects – Ludvig Friberg & Esben Syberg, Special Effects – Ludvig Friberg, Makeup Effects – Salla Yli-Luopa, Production Design – Simone Grau Roney. Production Company – Mer Film/Zentropa Sweden/Snowglobe/Bufo/Don’t Look Now/Film I Vast/Logical Pictures/Mediefondet Zefyr/YLE/DR.
Cast
Rakel Lenora Fløttum (Ida), Alva Brynsmo Ramstad (Anna), Sam Ashraf (Ben), Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim (Aisha), Ellen Dorrit Petersen (Ida and Anna’s Mother), Lisa Tønne (Ben’s Mother), Kadra Yusuf (Aisha’s Mother), Morten Svartveit (Ida and Anna’s Father)
Plot
After moving to a new apartment, young Ida befriends Ben, a boy her own age who plays in the common area between the apartment buildings. Ben demonstrates to her that he has the ability to move objects with his mind. After some practice, Ida finds that she can do the same herself. At the same time, Ida’s older sister Anna, who is a non-verbal autistic, is befriended by Aisha, another child living in the area. The two of them are able to communicate mentally. Through Aisha, Anna starts to speak while both of them display psychic powers of their own. However, Ben displays cruelty to animals and then uses his abilities to kill his mother. When Ida and Aisha realise that he is a dangerous threat, this pits him against the others.
The Innocents – not to be confused with the classic ghost story The Innocents (1961) – is a Norwegian film. Director Eskil Vogt had previously worked as a screenwriter for Joachim Trier on works like Reprise (2006), Oslo, 31, August (2011), Louder Than Bombs (2015) and The Worst Person in the World (2021). Vogt and Trier previously made one venture into psychic powers themes with the fine Thelma (2017). Prior to this, Vogt had directed Blind (2014), a non-genre work about a blind woman retreating into a world of illusion.
The Innocents is a uniquely different take on this. The film is seen through the eyes of the four children. There are adults present but mostly on the periphery and we see them only in terms of the way they relate to the children, not as separate characters. It is often a film where dialogue seems unimportant – this is not entirely the case but a good deal of the film takes place in silent exchanges, ones where characters are communicating mentally, or where we see everything occur in terms of physical happenings.
The evil Ben (Sam Ashraf) (front) and Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløttum)
Eskil Vogt’s camera is oblique – he simply watches the children and allows their performances to carry the film. It is a film that works in unspoken ways – often one child feeling things that happens to the other sympathetically. We see subtle, low key demonstrations of their powers – they being able to move a dropped bottle cap, bend the flow of water from a tap. Contrasted against this is the increasing cruelty exhibited by Sam Ashraf – in the earlier scenes, we see him dropping a cat down a stairwell and then stomping it to death. This culminates in the jolt scenes where he causes a frying pan to slam into his mother’s head and then a boiling pot to tip over her while she lies unconscious, killing her, after which he continues to stay on in the apartment with her dead body just lying there.
The success of the film lies in substantial part in Eskil Voft obtaining some great performances out of all the children. All of them are completely believable in their roles. The one that stands out the best is Alva Brynsmo Ramstad as the non-verbal autistic sister. The scenes watching her starting to speak and act – and of mother Ellen Dorrit Petersen’s amazement at seeing her vocalise – are some of the most joyous in the film, while those with her going into action with fierce moral determination make you want to cheer.
