The Innocents

    The Innocents
    2021

    Synopsis

    Four children become friends during the summer holidays, and out of sight of the adults they discover they have hidden powers. While exploring their newfound abilities in the nearby forests and playgrounds, their innocent play takes a dark turn and strange things begin to happen.

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    Cast

    • Rakel Lenora FløttumIda
    • Alva Brynsmo RamstadAnna
    • Sam AshrafBen
    • Mina Yasmin Bremseth AsheimAisha
    • Ellen Dorrit PetersenIda and Anna's Mother
    • Morten SvartveitIda and Anna's Father
    • Kadra YusufAisha's Mother
    • Lisa TønneBen's Mother
    • Irina Eidsvold TøienDoctor
    • Marius KolbenstvedtMan with Stone

    Recommendations

    • 90

      The Hollywood Reporter

      The lonely, uncanny and sometimes unthinkingly violent world of childhood is explored with chilling candor and exceptional skill in writer-director Eskil Vogt’s arthouse horror feature The Innocents.
    • 90

      Variety

      This superior chiller is both a satisfying genre exercise and a minute observation of the process by which young children acquire morality; its most striking aspect may just be the empathy Vogt displays for his 7- to 11-year-old stars, and the extraordinary juvenile performances that empathy brings out.
    • 90

      The New York Times

      Skillfully merging menace and sweetness (when Anna begins to speak, her parents’ delight is incredibly touching), The Innocents constructs a superbly eerie moral landscape, one that the children (all of whom are fantastic) must learn to navigate.
    • 85

      TheWrap

      Vogt, with his second feature, has crafted a disturbing and original heart-pounder all his own, uncommonly attuned to the perspective of unsocialized prepubescents: how their feelings work, what their minds process, and why their worst moments may bring catharsis to them, but can look terrifyingly wrong to us.
    • 80

      Screen Daily

      The Innocents successfully weds three elements: a strong, original concept distilled through a smart screenplay; excellent young performances; and a mise-en-scene which puts the audience in a child’s circular view of a very small world - tiny by nature of childhood itself, in which the smallest areas are unfathomably large, and also by circumstance on a self-contained housing estate.
    • 80

      Los Angeles Times

      The film maintains a quiet dynamic even throughout the most horrific moments, and while you might expect, or even want, the film to climax more operatically, the understated tone is a radical choice.
    • 75

      The A.V. Club

      Childhood is hard, and childhood grudges run harder. The Innocents pulls no punches in turning that fact into horror.
    • 60

      Arizona Republic

      The Innocents, writer and director Eskil Vogt’s horror film about children with supernatural powers, is definitely difficult to watch, a brutal bit of business. But the thrills aren’t cheap — they’re hard earned, if you can call them thrills at all.

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