'The Innocents': children or demi-demons?

Are your children the most innocent there are? You should see them when they are with other children, testing their psychic powers. Horrifying! That is what the Norwegian arthouse horror film The Innocents wants us to see.

Children appear innocent but are they really? According to Norwegian film scriptwriter and director Eskil Vogt, they are amoral creatures who socialise while growing up and learn that you cannot always follow your own impulses but also have to take others into account. Norms and values are acquired by following the example of parents and others but also by testing the limits which inevitably involves sometimes crossing them. Vogt did not develop this idea into a thesis for a degree in humanities, but into a sun-drenched, complex and chilling film.

In and around a housing block on the edge of town, recently moved-in nine-year-old Ida befriends Ben, who impresses with his psycho­kinetic powers. With the help of Aisha's telepathic gifts, Ida's autistic older sister can suddenly talk. Ben and Ida, in particular, spend the summer testing their paranormal powers to the extreme. Bullying cats is small beer compared to the cruelty that follows. They have no idea of the consequences of their actions. Empathy appears to be a more difficult superpower to acquire than psychokinesis. Ben, whose family background is less than ideal, becomes increasingly violent.

Where's the punch?
The Innocents will thrive better in an arthouse cinema than in a multiplex. Vogt is not out to scare you as much as possible and only sparingly uses special effects that give shape to the supernatural. He reckons that the sustained sinister atmosphere will make you shudder and plays on the fear that your little angels of children will become demi-demons or sociopaths if you fail to look after them. That is unsettling. The child actors are excellently directed and filmed, the social realism makes you believe in what you see.

But you leave less than satisfied. A great deal of discomfort, much less punch. Less spectacle and more morality. Mostly in the head, less on the screen, and if your attention strays for a moment, that does not matter much. Because the pretty straight-­forward plot is stretched out to last almost two hours giving your thoughts enough time to drift to more unforgettable films about horrid children such as Lord of the Flies, the two versions of Village of the Damned or Let the Right One In.

The Innocents can best be compared to Thelma, Joachim Trier's Carrie-like film about the daughter of strictly religious parents who, having discovered love, becomes destructive. Vogt wrote the screenplay for that film too, as well as for Trier's next film: the celebrated, Oscar-nominated The Worst Person in the World.

THE INNOCENTS
NO, dir.: Eskil Vogt, act.: Rakel Lenora Fløttum, Sam Ashraf, Alva Brynsmo Ramstad