★★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Magnus von Horn
Unequivocally one of the finest films of 2024, the Danish feature The Girl with the Needle is part period drama, part horror story, and an emotionally devastating cinematic masterwork.
The Girl with the Needle (Pigen med nålen; Denmark, 2024) — the official Danish entry for Best International Feature at the 97th Academy Awards — is one of the darkest, most haunting, and most moving horror-adjacent films in recent memory. Make that in long-term memory. It’s also one of those rare films that is simultaneously nightmarish and gorgeous.
If you are not already familiar with Danish serial killer Dagmar Overbye, on whose crimes this film is loosely based. You can read about her online, but be warned: who her victims were and what she did to them is truly unsettling.
A grueling scene, which is the reason for the film’s title, results in Karoline having a chance meeting with a woman named Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm). She runs an underground adoption agency, helping mothers to find foster homes for their unwanted children. After Karoline entrusts her baby to Dagmar, who soon tells her that the child has been adopted, Karoline begins to work at Dagmar’s candy store, still, really as a wet nurse for babies awaiting adoption. There are more unnerving elements to that wet nursing story that I’ll leave for viewers to discover. Eventually, Karoline learns disturbing truths working for Dagmar. This is where the film begins to head into increasingly shocking territory.
The Girl with the Needle uses horror elements throughout. There are sequences reminiscent of surreal images that would be at home in David Lynch films. In particular, when distorted faces weave one into another. Actually, the film had me recalling Lynch’s The Elephant Man at times, including the circus freak fate of war-scarred Peter. A case can even be made for The Girl with the Needle being film noir adjacent, as viewers watch the downfall of a woman caused most often by outside elements and arguably little — or at least far less — fault of her own.
Sonne is absolutely incredible in her starring role. This demanded much of the actress, as her character is put through the emotional wringer. Dyrholm is also excellent as the mysterious Dagmar.
Michal Dymek’s spectacular black-and-white cinematography is always beautiful, no matter how ugly or brutal the proceedings or settings onscreen might be. Frederikke Hoffmeier’s unnerving, eerie score had me always on edge. It is a near-constant reminder that the dread will never let up.
The Girl with the Needle does not rely on graphic violence to disturb and disquiet. Rather, what little it shows of violence is usually left to the viewer’s imagination . That’s a time-honored tradition in cinema that still works to this day when done effectively, as it is here. Magnus von Horn, who cowrote the screenplay with Line Langebek Knudsen, has crafted an intense, harrowing film that will linger in the mind long after the ending credits roll.
Review by Joseph Perry
The Girl with the Needle, from MUBI, opens in U.S. theaters from December 6, 2024.
