The Girl with the Needle

I can only feel respect for a film that dares to portray the world at its most raw, cruel, painful, and seldom hopeful. Not an easy watch, but a necessary one. It goes in the same vein as _The Nightingale_ and _The Devil's Bath_.

Trine Dyrholm is a force. I love her in everything that she does.

[Mubi] A foray into the sordidness of a life that seems to be marked by destiny towards an ever deeper darkness. The black and white photography precisely underlines the sordidness of the story, rather than embellishing it, while the shots are shaped as references to Tod Browning and David Lynch. A sordid and very disturbing look at the consequences of war, the return of soldiers who are imbued with horror, the frustrated hopes of the protagonist and the great Trine Dyrholm who composes one of the most horrifying characters we have seen in a long time.

The film is inspired by real events, which makes its story even more disturbing, and with this narrative, it builds a dark, dense atmosphere that permeates every detail. The performances are outstanding, with a solid cast that conveys great expressiveness. The choice of black and white cinematography is the right one, reinforcing the melancholy and sinister tone of the film. Everything carries this bleak aura, with some intense and extremely shocking scenes.

“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.

I felt tense throughout the whole movie. The atmosphere is so heavy that it feels like time stops. When the first scene with the baby is finally revealed and the sound cuts out, it felt like I was right there, experiencing that horror. It’s all so unbelievably cruel, and the worst part is knowing it’s based on a true story.

Cruelty and pain, beautifully photographed. 😣

Wow. Just wow. Completely broadsided me. Easily two of the best leading actor performances you'll see this year. I won't say much so as not to spoil anything but definitely not one for the faint hearted. Bleak. Highly recommended.

Like sewing a dress but then realizing the fabric is your own skin.

This black and white Cannes Film Festival entry about the tribulations of being a post World War I Danish factory woman is more of a horror movie than an art film: Change My Mind. Based on a true crime story, the twist isn't really a surprise but everything else absolutely fucking is.

“The Girl with the Needle” is well deserving of its Oscar nomination. The two lead actresses are strong, and the black-and-white cinematography also makes the film an impressive visual experience. In terms of the plot, you are thrown into the complicated life of main character Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) right from the start. The first half of the movie in particular is very effective, but for my taste, the movie as a whole is a little too gloomy. I can really only tolerate a depressive atmosphere for a limited time, and as with “The Devil's Bath,” for example, it was ultimately too much for me. That being said, “The Girl with the Needle” is definitely worth seeing.

It has a nice black and white aesthetic. The story however is so-so.

The first part, during the war, shows how Karoline is having a hard time, with her missing, but not declared dead husband. This is interesting to realize how hard it was for women that were forced to work in factories, but paid very little and still very dependent on their husbands gone at war. However, story-wise it's pretty boring.

Even though it seems to have a feminist message in the begining, any time she gets really in trouble, she runs back to her husband. And that also gives a different vibe to her actions. At first she's mostly presented as a victim of the unjust society, that falls in love again, and is betrayed, again. But afterwards it appears more calculated. [spoiler]She sees an opportunity and seduces her boss, gets pregnant, kicks her husband (who had a pretty good and understandable reason to be missing) out, and tries to marry the new guy[/spoiler]. But when it does not work, she looks for her husband. She was low on money and desperate, she did not just happen to walk into a circus for fun, she was explicitly looking for him. When she [spoiler]gets rid of the baby[/spoiler] and does not need his help anymore, she flees again, and comes back to look for him later when she lost her job.

Dagmar's character is actually the center of the story here, and once Karoline works for her it's a bit better. The job in itself, the weird relation with her daughter, up to the revelation towards the end.

The movie takes an interesting angle on Dagmar's activities. In the end, at [spoiler]her trial[/spoiler], she claims she was [spoiler]a hero[/spoiler]. And even if it's a claim that it's hard to hear for [spoiler]killing babies[/spoiler], there's definitely a bit of that here. She's a tragic character that takes upon herself all the [spoiler]sin and misery of the murders in place of the mothers[/spoiler]. Given the state of society, life would have just been hell for the mothers. The drug use is also presented as a way to deal with this.

However, the real-life Dagmar seems to have been a bit different. She was not providing adoption services, she was supposed to be a caretaker, which makes it a bit hard to have the same spin on her actions. On wikipedia she's qualified as [spoiler]serial killer[/spoiler], drug addict, and that's it.

So it's a bit disturbing to try to put a morally grayish spin on a real life [spoiler]straight killer[/spoiler]'s actions.