I think it’s safe to say the heroes of the Marvel and DC universes aren’t going anywhere any time soon, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be room for others to play with similar genre ideas. Big budget heroes may dominate the box office more weeks out of the year than not, but I daresay they lack the heart found in some of their criminally under-seen counterparts. Believe it or not, there are films and filmmakers out there tackling stories about superhumans that don’t involve gargantuan budgets and merchandising empires. Eskil Vogt’s The Innocents is a perfect example of this – a dark and thought-provoking exploration of what the super-powered genre can achieve with a bit of creativity and the willingness to break free of expectations.
Ever since 2012’s Chronicle, I’ve been waiting for another film to come along that gets into the nitty gritty of the corrupting effects a superpower may have over a person. Sure, MCU movies brush up against the subject, but they almost always end in full-throttle villainy accompanied by massive amounts of property damage rather than a true observation of human weakness. In blockbuster movies, there’s no such thing as small-scale, so more often than not, shortcuts are taken when it comes to anything but surface level characterization. Flashbacks and exposition fill in some of the blanks, but they never fully satisfy curiosities about a villain’s state of mind. 2019’s Joker makes a decent attempt, but the story still starts midstream. The Innocents, like Chronicle before it, offers the much-needed step-by-step examination I’ve been craving – one that takes us from the childhood discovery of superhuman abilities to the eventual deviant behaviors they can cause.
A Norwegian housing complex may not seem like the obvious place to set a film of this kind, but in the hands of director Eskil Vogt, it becomes a heroic battleground of good versus evil. In the summer months, children swarm the playgrounds in a flurry of activity, but not everyone is invited along to play. When newcomers Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløttum) and her autistic older sister Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad) meet fellow outcasts Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim) and Ben (Sam Ashraf), a serendipitous kinship forms that defies logic and the laws of physics. They discover that, when near each other, some of the children develop extraordinary psychic abilities, which at first are merely entertaining. Over time, however, these miraculous powers begin to change them in more ways than one.
As the whimsy of their initial discovery gives way to exposing the dark underbelly of human inclination, a tangible malice and dread forms between characters that puts every perfunctory MCU rivalry to shame. Where big-budget spectacles may elicit a sense of enormity masked as faux-importance, The Innocents taps into real and definable emotions through a series of increasingly unsettling events leading up to the best super-powered final showdown I have ever seen. The Innocents may appear tiny when placed against the budgets and returns of its franchised peers, but I assure you, it is a towering giant when it comes to anything and everything that actually matters in artistic and emotional expression. Other films may boast high-end glitz and glamor, but these contrivances are not prerequisites for quality filmmaking.
James is a writer, skateboarder, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.