Written and directed by Eskil Vogt
Starring Rakel Lenora Fløttum, Alva Brynsmo Ramstad, Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim, and Sam Ashraf
Unrated
Runtime: 118 minutes
In theaters and on demand May 13

by Clayton Hayes, Staff Writer

The Innocents (aka De uskyldige) is one of two films to premiere at Cannes in 2021 for which Eskil Vogt is credited as screenwriter, the other being critical darling The Worst Person in the World (aka Verdens verste menneske, dir. Joachim Trier). Though I didn’t care much for Worst, I was a fan of Trier’s 2017 fantasy/drama Thelma, also co-written with Vogt, which seems to share a lot of DNA with this film. Like Thelma, The Innocents is about young people (in this case, children) isolated from their parents and dabbling in supernatural abilities that they don’t quite comprehend. Unlike Thelma, it’s an incredibly problematic film in a few different ways! 

The Innocents introduces us to pre-teen Ida (Fløttum) and her older sister Anna (Ramstad), who are moving into an apartment complex at the beginning of summer. Ida is lonely in her new setting and also expresses resentment (to the point of physical abuse) towards her sister’s autism, which manifests in Anna as a near-complete lack of interaction with her surroundings. Shortly after moving in, the girls meet Ben (Ashraf) and Aisha (Asheim), who live in nearby complexes and who each seem to possess supernatural abilities. Ben amuses Ida with a display of weak telekinesis while Aisha’s telepathy causes her to gravitate towards Anna. It’s soon discovered that their powers magnify when they are together, and that Anna shares the abilities of both.

But, in a somewhat predictable turn, Ben has a cruel streak that will have those (like me) sensitive to violence towards animals squirming in their seats. It becomes clear that he sees his newfound strength as a means of taking revenge on anyone that he feels has wronged him. It’s a classic trope that has been around for decades, popping up in John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos (and its adaptations by Wolf Rilla and John Carpenter), The Twilight Zone episode “It’s a Good Life,” and Stephen King’s Carrie (along with its famous Brian de Palma adaptation and multiple remakes). Vogt’s version takes on a bit of a unique angle by using children as its central cast, and most pre-teens at that (though you could argue it’s a pretty King-esque direction to go).

Not that anyone would confuse this for a Stephen King story. Like Thelma, it’s a drama with supernatural elements and, aside from a few scenes, never strays too close to horror. It’s certainly a well-made film, though, and Vogt seems pretty capable in the director’s chair despite only one previous feature to his name, 2014’s Blind. Working with children is notoriously difficult, and juggling a primary cast that’s all children can only compound the difficulty. None of the children in the cast seem to have had any previous acting credits, which makes their very natural presence on screen all the more impressive.

Equally impressive is the film’s look which, thanks to veteran cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, is gorgeous. Grøvlen’s resume speaks for itself, with credits on Thomas Vinterburg’s Oscar-winning Another Round (aka Druk) and arthouse darlings like Rams (aka Hrútar, dir. Grímur Hákonarson) and Victoria (dir. Sebastian Schipper).

None of this, sadly, was enough to distract me from Vogt’s incredibly problematic choices in writing The Innocents. It’s almost as though he were intentionally leaning into as many regressive stereotypes as possible. Ben and Aisha, who are introduced as having supernatural abilities, are the only children of color we see until one of the final sequences in the film. They’re further “othered” either in appearance (Asheim, who plays Aisha, has vitiligo) or in the audience’s glimpses of their home life (Ben’s mother is neglectful and possibly abusive). Anna, who develops powers after meeting Ben and Aisha, is also marked by the film as “different” because of her autism.

It’s unclear how familiar Vogt is with autism, but it doesn’t seem like much. In an interview, he claimed to draw inspiration for The Innocents from an author who described her own experiences with a “regressively autistic” child. It’s an unpleasant phrase to use (though Vogt attributes it to the unnamed author), as is his referring to having an autistic child as “a real nightmare” for a parent.

I’m not sure why Vogt made the choices he did; my guess is that it was an attempt to make a fairly trite premise more interesting. Even if that were the case, it fails to do so. The plot of The Innocents never strays from a well-trodden path, and nothing that happens should come as much of a surprise. Despite some small achievements in the performances and the cinematography, there’s not enough here to recommend The Innocents.