Kids can be the worst. I know two normal, mostly well-adjusted people who killed a bunch of baby chicks as kids - one with a hammer, the other by stomping on them with his new boots. Sometimes torture and murder seem like a good idea; Some kids don't know any better.
The Innocents understands this. It should surprise no one that a Norwegian film with a premise that might sound a little like Stranger Things ends up being a deeply fucked up movie that, to put it mildly, does not shy away from some horrifying violence inflicted on animals, little children, and a couple of bystanders. But damn if it isn't a great movie.
Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløttum) is a... morally challenged little girl (I'd go with little piece of shit) that is introduced as she's painfully pinching her autistic sister (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad)'s leg just to see if she can get a reaction.
Her family is relocating to an apartment block on what seems like the outskirts of the city, and everyone else seems to be on holiday. As Ida explores her new place and environs and makes new friends the film does an outstanding job at capturing the feel -the uncanniness- of being a kid in a strange place. The focus drifts from kid to kid, and sometimes to the adults in their life with an impressionistic bent that reminded me a little of The Tree of Life.
Soon she meets and becomes fast friends with Ben (Sam Ashraf), who shows her a neat trick: with a little concentration, he can change the direction of falling objects just by concentrating on them. On a darker note, little Ida's moved on to doing some really horrible shit to her sister - out of boredom, curiosity, resentment... it's not like she's thinking these things through. And with Ben, who's a tiny ball of grudges and sociopathy, they work their way up to some light cat torture and murder.
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| doesthedogdie.com confirms this cute lil' fella does indeed die, and that it's (sic) very grafic. |
Meanwhile her autistic sister Anna establishes a connection with Aisha (,Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim) another neighboring kid who has some empathic and telepathic abilities. When they all get together they seem to potentiate each other's powers. The rules for this. as befits a movie about kids playing around who don't see anything too strange with psychic abilities, are loose and ill-defined, but Anna is also revealed to have a mixture of telekinesis and other powers. She also starts to break out of her shell slightly, murmuring a few words and responding to the environment. Ben is the one most strengthened by all this, and he soon starts developing fun new powers like mind control... and using them in the sort of terrifying ways you'd expect from a budding little psychopath.
The suspense here is outstanding. It's a violent movie, but its most effective, wince-inducing events either happen off-screen or as a quick flash of gore; they work particularly well because the movie carefully sets them up, either by piling on aggravating circumstances or by giving you all you need to do the math before it arrives at the result: You know this kid holds a grudge towards these football playing kids. You've been shown he can snap a thick stick in half with his mind. And now the camera following the football game is focusing on these kids' legs...
And it's made even more unsettling by the film's willingness to linger on the physical and emotional aftershocks of its events. It's a cruel and unusual movie. Or, you know, cruel as usual for a Scandinavian movie.
The movie -on paper- eventually resolves into a Stephen King-style showdown between the evil kid and the good kids, with Ida realizing maybe actions have consequences. But The Innocents remains steadfastly low-key, with an excellent subversion of a grand finale so subtle only kids notice that something's going on.
Torture and murder can seem like a good idea to some kids, they don't know any better. That maybe some of them can learn and grow up... that's as good as it gets here.
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