The Girl with the Needle

Based on true events, writer-director Magnus von Horn’s The Girl with the Needle centres around young factory worker Karoline (a marvellous Vic Carmen Sonne), a seamstress living in Copenhagen at the end of WWI. Although the end of the fighting is cause for celebration, the world that Karoline inhabits is a bleak one. Pregnant and her husband presumed to be dead, the film opens with her being evicted from her home and moving into a small, dank room that she can barely afford. Life continues to get worse for her from here until she meets Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), a caring woman who runs an underground adoption agency to help women with unwanted babies. Dagmar takes her in and gives her a job, but a harrowing revelation soon threatens to destroy their friendship in what is an inescapably visceral cinematic experience.

Presented in an atmospheric black and white, there’s a hauntingly oppressive feel to von Horn’s latest feature. There are nightmarish sequences where faces twist and warp into grotesque versions of themselves alongside a soundscape that’s as equally evocative, with undertones of Lynch’s Eraserhead being found lingering throughout the grimy streets and unwelcoming interiors. The bulk of the first half takes its time to ensure that audiences are fully immersed within its decaying world as Karoline is thrust between one desperate situation to another. The downside to this slower approach to storytelling is that the plot is largely non-existent throughout the first half. There’s only so much that the cinematography and Sonne’s flawless performance can carry on their own before the pacing starts to drag.

Thankfully, it’s at this point when Dyrholm’s Dagmar arrives on the scene, taking this film to a whole other level when she does. While the events prior to her appearance were macabre, some of the sequences in the latter half are downright horrific. The filmmaker knows how much to show onscreen without it becoming needlessly excessive, instead allowing the sound design to convey the full impact of what’s happening just out of sight. Just as these shocking discoveries take the plot in a compelling new direction, however, events are abruptly cut short, ending Karoline’s sombre tale with a rushed conclusion.

Despite having points of uneven pacing, von Horn has successfully crafted a visually arresting and consistently affective portrait of hardship and tragedy. 

Andrew Murray

The Girl with the Needle is released nationwide on 10^th January 2025.

Watch the trailer for The Girl with the Needle here: