'The Girl with the Needle' Cannes review: A drama with hidden horrors

Amidst the First World War, The Girl with the Needle follows a young Danish woman forced to make difficult decisions when she discovers she's pregnant unaware of the dark secrets that lurk.

The Girl with the Needle is a bleak, dread-filled film that blends psychological horror with real horror, highlighted by disturbing imagery and an ominous discordant score.
The narrative follows Karoline, a young impoverished woman in WWI-era Copenhagen, as she makes difficult decisions after discovering she's pregnant.
Directed by Magnus von Horn with a style reminiscent of Andrei Tarkovsky, the film transforms from a period drama to a psychological thriller, presenting its dark true-crime story with visceral, emotional impact and even flashes of macabre humor.

The Girl with the Needle premiered in competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

There's a reveal in The Girl with the Needle so heinous and disturbing you'd think you were watching a horror—and at times it feels like it is. With its ominous discordant score and disturbing imagery—like the extended opening sequence where we watch a face (perhaps multiple) distorting and blending into one another—director Magnus von Horn treats the story of one of Denmark's most infamous crimes with the bleakness and dread it deserves. The movie's descent into psychological horror (and real horror) isn't linear though, it takes time to build its narrative in a slow burn that never disengages so that when you're sucked in, it's too late.

The eponymous “girl with the needle” is Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne), a young woman living in Copenhagen during the First World War. With her soldier husband missing in action, she's fallen behind in rent, which she pays for with a factory job sewing uniforms. When her landlord brings a mother and her young daughter as prospective tenants, Karoline does her best to deter them by talking about the smokey stove and rats that crawl in her bed at night. The daughter throws a fear-fueled tantrum at the prospect which causes her mother to slap her, without abandon. The sudden shock of violence isn't the last instance of mother-inflicted trauma.

After finding a shabby one-windowed attic covered in bird feces to live in, she falls into an affair with Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup) the aristocratic owner of the factory who sympathizes with her plight. The swirling romance is cut short when Karoline realizes she's pregnant, which forces his mother to threaten his inheritance causing a breakup (and Karoline to lose her job). Now with child and nowhere to turn, she turns to desperate measures. She brings one of her knitting needles to the local bathhouse to give herself an abortion. Director and co-writer Magnus von Horn captures the act without sensationalizing it, but it doesn't make it less effective. He presents it as a visceral bit of body horror that only adds to the dread-filled atmosphere—and eventually his ultimate message.

There's a constant sense of impending doom driven by Frederikke Hoffmeier's discordant score—like a baseball bat smashing into a piano—even as Karoline is unaware of the plots happening in the background. Even when jovial Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), an older woman at the bathhouse with her curiously young toddler daughter Erena (Avo Knox Martin), helps Karoline after her failed attempt the darkness remains.

Dagmar offers her a service she provides out of the back of her candy shop. She allows would-be mothers to drop off their unwanted children for her to find them a home with a family unable to have their own—or looking to help an orphan. The mission, though illegal, is so admirable to Karoline that she asks Dagmar to take her in as her apprentice and help care for Erena. From there, The Girl with the Needle takes twists and turns that are better left unspoiled but are made even more impactful when the final title card labeling the story as based on true events drops onto the screen.

Von Horn's direction evokes Tarkovsky's expressionist style, particularly Persona, with striking crisp black-and-white that suggests horror rather than showing it outright—though it certainly has its moments. As the slow-burn marches towards each of its reveals, it transforms itself from period drama to psychological thriller in a way that is as satisfying as it is shocking. It helps that Vic Carmen Sonne and Trine Dyrholm are giving perfectly pitched performances that transform with the movie.

For a story as dark as The Girl with the Needle, there's something so enticing about how it presents itself—a storyline involving Karoline's ex-husband is grotesque in a macabre way but captures you like a sideshow. There are even flashes of the pitchest black humor as Karoline navigates her new situation. Whether you'd consider it a part of the true crime genre is up to you, but if it is then von Horn is pushing the genre to new limits. It is visceral, emotional and relevant without guiding its audience's hand. Shocking without malice and engrossing without insincerity, it is a highlight of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

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Hey! I'm Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I'm also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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Karl Delossantos

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Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.