"The Girl with the Needle" doesn't ask for permission to make you uncomfortable. It barges in with a heavy, suffocating atmosphere, dragging out a cruel reality that, despite being set in the early 20th century, feels eerily relevant today. Magnus von Horn directs with surgical precision, avoiding cheap sentimentality but still maintaining a deeply human perspective on his protagonists. The result is an intense drama that carries the weight of the world in every frame-making it almost impossible to forget.
Focusing the story on Karoline, played with raw vulnerability by Vic Carmen Sonne, is one of the film's smartest choices. Instead of zooming in directly on the infamous serial killer Dagmar Overbye, who terrorized Denmark in the aftermath of World War I, the movie follows the journey of this young woman who, with no options left, is pushed into an abyss of despair. Karoline is the embodiment of a brutal reality-a society that turns its back on poor women, judges without offering alternatives, and turns victims into accomplices in their own tragedies. Sonne delivers a hypnotic performance, full of nuances, letting her hopelessness seep through small gestures and silences that say more than any dialogue ever could.
Von Horn builds the film with a heavy, claustrophobic visual style. Michael Dymek's cinematography is hauntingly beautiful, with a color palette that reinforces the oppressive atmosphere. Cold tones and heavy shadows dominate the screen, creating a constant sense of danger even in the most mundane scenes. The feeling of suffocation is relentless, with the camera often framing Karoline in ways that emphasize her vulnerability-whether in cramped rooms or the dark streets of a city that seems completely indifferent to her existence. The soundtrack is another key element in shaping this mood. The experimental sound design, filled with unsettling noises and an eerie electronic score that echoes Karoline's racing heartbeat, never lets the audience feel at ease.
The film's pacing is deliberately slow, almost as if it wants to trap the audience in Karoline's despair. Scenes unfold gradually, making sure that every bad decision, every door slammed in her face, is felt with full impact. The introduction of Dagmar Overbye, played with an overwhelming presence by Trine Dyrholm, adds an extra layer of tension. Dyrholm's Dagmar is cold but never cartoonish. She doesn't need dramatic outbursts to convey the threat she poses. It's a restrained performance that creeps up on you, slowly revealing a figure that's almost hypnotic in her quiet cruelty. The film doesn't try to humanize her to the point of excusing her crimes, but it does suggest that the social conditions of the time were the perfect breeding ground for people like her-and that suggestion is what makes it all the more unsettling.
That said, "The Girl with the Needle" is not an easy watch. Its relentless atmosphere can be exhausting, and the complete lack of breathing room amidst so much misery makes the experience almost unbearable at times. Von Horn offers no relief, not even in small doses, which might alienate viewers looking for some kind of catharsis or hope. But maybe that's the whole point-there's no room for romanticizing when the central theme is the systematic abandonment of vulnerable women. The film's brutality doesn't just lie in Dagmar's actions but in its depiction of a society that willingly ignores the problems it creates.
There's something deeply unsettling about the way the film works with its visual metaphors. The images of disfigured faces, the play of light and shadow distorting Karoline's expression as her situation worsens-it all builds a sense that, in some way, every character is scarred, physically or emotionally, by the cruelty of life. The war scars of Jorgen (Joachim Fjelstrup), the lover who abandons her, serve as a literal reflection of the invisible wounds carried by women like Karoline.
In the end, "The Girl with the Needle" is not an easy film to digest, but it's precisely this harshness that makes it so powerful. It's a work that fearlessly dives into the dark, unsettling depths of its story-no compromises, no redemptive endings. Von Horn delivers a film that disturbs and provokes, forcing the audience to confront uncomfortable truths about inequality, abandonment, and the never-ending vulnerability of women in extreme poverty. A film that, much like the needle in the title, pierces through the skin and keeps throbbing long after it's over.
