The Innocents

The Innocents (2021) is a Norwegian film directed by Eskil Vogt, and the name may be familiar: he is the co-writer on all of Joachim Trier's films, including The Worst Person in the World. Summer, in an Oslo housing block where most families have left on holiday. Nine year old Ida grows up in the shadow of her autistic, nonverbal older sister Anna. They meet two other children in the complex, the excluded Ben and the gentle Aisha. When the four of them are together something surfaces. Telepathy, telekinesis, mind control, and all of it stronger in each other's presence. The film does not turn this into a superhero story. Vogt's real question is what happens when power arrives in the hands of a child who has not yet learned where the moral limits are. The answer is frightening, because the children never decide to be cruel. They are simply curious. That is why the most disturbing scenes are not the violent ones but the expressions on the children's faces while they try something out. It screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2021. It runs 117 minutes. Good for: slow building horror, Nordic cinema, and supernatural drama. Less good for: it contains violence toward an animal and toward children, filmed coldly. Anyone sensitive to that should not start it.