The Girl with the Needle: A Haunting Portrait of Desperation

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4/5

Magnus von Horn’s The Girl with the Needle, streaming on Amazon Prime Video, is a harrowing journey into the bleak underbelly of early 20th-century Copenhagen. Shot in a striking, monochromatic black-and-white, the film is less a conventional narrative and more a grim, atmospheric immersion into a world where poverty and desperation leave no room for morality. Von Horn meticulously crafts a suffocating environment, drawing the viewer into a chilling tableau of human suffering and the dark choices made for survival.

The Bleak Narrative

The film follows Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne), a young factory worker who, facing destitution, seeks refuge with Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), a seemingly compassionate proprietor of a baby home. What begins as a glimmer of hope for Karoline quickly descends into a moral nightmare. The narrative unfolds with a methodical, almost unbearable tension, revealing the true, sinister nature of Dagmar’s business. As Karoline becomes ensnared in a web of infanticide and exploitation, the film forces an unflinching look at the extreme lengths people are driven to in the face of societal indifference.

Stark Cinematography

The visual style is arguably the film’s most powerful character. The stark black-and-white cinematography by Michał Dymek strips away any visual comfort, creating a world that feels both historically authentic and chillingly timeless. The close-ups on the faces of the characters, etched with despair and fear, are particularly haunting, amplifying the raw, psychological horror. There is a sense of claustrophobia that permeates every frame, a feeling that there is no escape from the dingy rooms and oppressive circumstances that bind the characters.

Masterful Performances

At the heart of this grim spectacle are two masterful performances. Vic Carmen Sonne portrays Karoline with a fragile vulnerability that makes her descent all the more tragic, while Trine Dyrholm delivers a career-defining turn as Dagmar. Dyrholm’s performance is a terrifying study in controlled malice, her cold-eyed practicality a stark and deeply unsettling contrast to her initial veneer of kindness. Together, the two create a symbiotic and deeply disturbing portrait of victim and perpetrator, often blurring the lines between the two as survival becomes the only absolute. The Girl with the Needle is not an easy film to watch, but it is an essential one, a beautifully shot and profoundly moving testament to the darkness that can take root when a society turns its back on the most vulnerable.