To say Magnus von Horn’s The Girl with the Needle is hard to watch may be the understatement of the year. Even when its harrowing sound design doesn’t make the audience subject to agonizing screams that rattle our bones and haunt our minds long after the credits have finished rolling, the movie’s overall presentation destabilizes and shocks the very minute cinematographer Michał Dymek (who also worked with Jesse Eisenberg on A Real Pain this year, demonstrating massive range) distorts several faces in its opening shot. It’s a complex sequence of images to describe in words, especially when feeling it in front of our eyes. However, it must be seen to be believed.
The film is thoroughly unpleasant, particularly in the context in which von Horn depicts and the protagonist we follow for 123 minutes. For some, that may be a massively hard sell, and it’s understandable why many will not want to go near a movie like this because it doesn’t simply show brutal acts of violence but makes the audience experience each ounce of dread for two brutal hours. The dirty, almost perverse use of black-and-white primes the audience that this will not be a joyful story, and even if there are fleeting moments of hope in Karoline’s (Vic Carmen Sonne) path, they are almost always supplanted by despair and loss.
Karoline works in a factory during World War I but is struggling to make ends meet after the presumed death of her husband, Peter (Besir Zeciri). Having not heard anything about him ever since he went to war, she has moved on and becomes infatuated with Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup), the factory owner, who has also liked Karoline. These moments of love between the two aren’t depicted happily, even if a slight connection begins to blossom. One, however, sees that Jørgen is simply using Karoline to satiate his sexual impulses, which she can’t realize. But since this is a story where pain trumps anything else, their presumptive marriage gets shut down by Jørgen’s mother (Benedikte Hansen), resulting in Karoline being left alone and pregnant.
Her husband has also returned, morbidly disfigured by the war, and has become an object of attraction for a circus of “freaks” to look at. When he comes back home, Karoline gives him food, but immediately rejects him, wanting nothing to do with the fact that he is now a “monster.” However, after she no longer has a job following her “break-up” with Jørgen, she decides to end it all and sticks a needle in herself to get rid of the baby. The black-and-white subdues the blood and any outright moments of ‘gore’ but makes it even more disturbing when Dymek lingers on her face as the needle slowly penetrates her body. We feel each ounce of the pain she inflicts upon herself, further exacerbated by an unshakably haunting musical score from Frederikke Hoffmeier, recalling the atmosphere Mica Levi laid out through their score in The Zone of Interest.
Karoline’s life is ultimately saved by Dagmar Overbye (an incredible Trine Dynholm), the bakery owner who takes a liking to her and promises to help get rid of the baby when she goes into labor. When the day ultimately arrives, Karoline brings her baby to Dagmar, and she is sent to a new family…or so, that’s what women who want to get rid of their newborns think. You see, Dagmar actually kills the babies and disposes of them without their knowledge. This isn’t a spoiler, but what the movie is actually based on – a Danish serial killer who has murdered between 9 and 25 children, including one of her own, from 1913 to 1920 and was sentenced to death in 1921.
Her ruling was later amended to a life sentence, but what’s most horrific about von Horn’s depiction of Dagmar is how she has no explanation for why she would do something like this. The second half of the movie attempts (and the keyword is: attempts, she’s beyond saving) to humanize her in developing a close relationship between Dagmar and Karoline, who begins to work for her as a caretaker for the babies before they are “sent” to a new family. Of course, she’s utterly impervious to what is happening until she follows her one day and sees firsthand where they end up.
But the humanity depicted here is a mere façade in an attempt for Dagmar to manipulate Karoline, whom she thinks is easily gullible. However, when she attaches herself to a baby that will eventually get killed in Dagmar’s bare hands, something clicks within the killer that she didn’t perceive before when it came to Karoline. Unfortunately, von Horn doesn’t explore this path and always portrays the character in a rather cold, ruthless lens. Still, it works in Dynholm’s favor, whose piercing eyes constantly betray what she says to Karoline. But our protagonist can’t realize it since she’s grown to like what Dagmar has brought to her, because she may very well be the only person who likes her for who she is.
But does she really? It’s in that question that The Girl with the Needle begins to lose itself (and languishingly drag) during its midsection, where its constantly involving (but not too rapid) pace pulled the audience into its evocative nightmare, only for the movie to grind to a halt in developing a relationship based on lies. Despite constantly rock-solid work from Carmen Sonne (who seems like a revelation even after starring in Hlynur Pálmason’s Godland) and Dynholm, von Horn has difficulty translating their connection beyond the dark confines of its black-and-white frame. Of course, this acts as a signifier for what’s to come, and the ultimate reveal is far more disturbing than one thinks, partly due to the most petrifying sound design heard in a movie since Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar-winning 2023 film.
We never see the babies being killed, but we hear their helpless cries, then turning into terrified screams before they abruptly stop breathing. It’s the year’s most disturbing scene, so hard to stomach it eventually gets repeated in an even more distressing way. The shattering sounds punctuate its morbid aesthetic, which, in turn, burn our retinas and ensure we will never forget what we have seen and heard. Such a moment like this is bound to cause controversy, especially in its depiction of violence against children. But von Horn doesn’t sensationalize, nor does he linger on the killings. They are shocking enough simply because the act itself is so horrible, and one can’t understand why such a person could ever do something like this.
Visually, it’s also not hard to see the influences Dymek plays with in representing such terror. German expressionism is the most obvious in the black-and-white and grimy, almost otherworldly lens each shot is visualized with, but he even steals Dziga Vertov compositions in its opening extreme close-up of an eye looking at a city. Yet, they don’t feel like outright plagiarism but are always in service of how von Horn wants to portray this tragic tale of hopelessness that, beyond all expectations, ends on a more hopeful note for Karoline.
In a world where, at the time, famine, sickness, and poverty sadly plagued most human beings in a post-war setting, von Horn at least ensures that her protagonist gets a fighting chance for survival and happiness. It absolutely won’t be easy, as illustrated in how she has to make ends meet in the movie’s opening section, but her will is strong enough for her to push through the pain and hope that things will get better, at least for her sake.
Perhaps it may be futile, and maybe the movie does get much colder than it should be, which, in turn, distances us from emotionally latching onto Karoline’s profoundly personal story. Still, there’s no denying The Girl with the Needle’s incredible nightmarish power, which works best when plot efficiency is at its minimum. Most of it is told through its striking visuals and note-perfect sound design, crawling under the audience’s skin before they even have a chance to react to the horror drawn on the screen. It may alienate audiences once more eventually see it, but it’s by design because when the end credits ultimately appear, you will never forget it.
SCORE: ★★★1/2
