Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
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.
The Innocents is a quietly unsettling Norwegian film that stands apart through its unflinching, grounded portrayal of children wielding supernatural abilities without the usual genre scaffolding. The child performances are genuinely remarkable — naturalistic and deeply unsettling — while Eskil Vogt's direction and the cinematography create a cold, observational dread rooted in mundane suburban spaces. The film's novelty lies in treating its premise with anthropological seriousness, exploring cruelty and empathy as twin forces in child development. The plot is deliberately slow-burn and understated, which rewards patience but can feel meandering. The ending, while consistent in tone, stops somewhat abruptly without full cathartic resolution, leaving the thematic threads slightly undertied.