Writer/director Eskil Vogt knows he’s broken the two biggest rules of filmmaking.
“They say you should never work with children or animals”, he told Zavvi, “and I ended up writing a movie with four leads who are very small kids and a cat!”
Vogt, who recently was Oscar nominated for co-writing The Worst Person In The World, is discussing his latest project behind the camera: The Innocents.
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The supernatural psychological drama follows a group of children from a Norwegian housing estate coming to terms with the fact they have superpowers.
But as we know from comics, with great power comes great responsibility, with Vogt’s film exploring how they are not old enough to fully grasp the moral ways to use their powers. It makes for uncomfortable viewing – especially if you’re an animal lover.
Because of the dark subject matter, it was one of the most challenging projects Vogt has ever taken on. This was most evident when it came to casting, a process which took more than a year, as he explained: “When I write, I try not to think of any practical difficulties as that’s constraining your imagination.
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“But the main difficulty was always obvious: if even one of the four kids wasn’t good enough, the movie wouldn’t be successful. The challenge was then to become open in casting so we could see as many people as possible for each role.
“The gender or ethnicity of all four leads was changed from the first draft, so we could secure the best young actors. The story was originally about two brothers, and it ended up being about two sisters – that openness helped me find the most amazing kids for the movie.”
Even outside of the supernatural elements, there’s a lot to make audiences wince. Our lead, seven-year old Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløttum), is introduced aggressively pinching her autistic elder sister Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad), later putting broken glass in shoes to see how her non-verbal sibling would react.
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It’s only when Ida befriends Ben (Sam Ashraf) that she starts to see right from wrong, as he uses his telekinetic abilities in increasingly deadly ways. Unusually for a film with a young cast that features queasily violent sequences, Vogt didn’t shelter his actors from the more unnerving moments.
“I can’t ask kids between seven and ten to read the script – even if you tell a child the story, after about five minutes they’ll start looking out the window. No kid has that focus!
“So my rule was that I always told them the truth before shooting each scene: I initially over prepared with how I would explain the dark scenes, but shooting those ended up being the most fun they had on set.
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“Kids can often be the best actors because they have the ability to change emotions rapidly – few performers have that same manic-depressive energy. You’d shoot for a minute and then as soon as I said cut, they’d be doing cartwheels and running around, even if they were just playing a scene where they were really scared.”
However, the young cast haven’t been allowed to see the film, which caused a bit of chaos at the Cannes premiere last summer.
“They were allowed to see the first 20 minutes so they could see themselves on the big screen – but naturally they wanted to stay, and we had to get them out before they started running all over trying to watch the rest. Luckily, we had people on hand to stop them from sneaking a peek!”
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For Vogt, the big surprise of that Cannes premiere was the initial wave of reviews, with several critics labeling the film as ‘the Norwegian X-Men’.
“Suddenly people were telling me I’ve made a superhero movie, but at no point had it occurred to me that this would be seen as such. I was making a film about how we develop morality during childhood: if the main focus was on their supernatural powers, it would just be a knock-off X-Men.
“I was afraid of doing that kind of story – I wanted this to be more about the magic of childhood, where your imagination is so strong you can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy, and you exist in a separate world from adults.
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“I wanted to create that feeling of being a child and revive that in the spectator who might be much older. Also, superhero movies weren’t a reference point for me largely because stories about young people with powers are usually metaphors for adolescence, whereas this is about younger children.”
As a fan of the genre, Vogt is much happier with his film being embraced by the horror community, something he wasn’t sure would happen; “When I write I just follow my own impulses and don’t tie anything into a specific genre, but I love horror movies and I knew it would go into that territory at times.
“I was worried the film wouldn’t be accepted by the aficionados who like their horror cinema pure, but it’s played at several horror festivals and to see those audiences responding to the movie, giving it the thumbs up, is the highest possible compliment. I wanted to explore some serious themes but above all, I wanted it to be scary.”
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Considering the most challenging project of his career has been rapturously received, would Vogt ever consider breaking the first rule of filmmaking again, working with children and animals?
“If you choose the right children, they’re great, they were delivering magic every day on set. I think some directors don’t spend enough time casting, or devote too much time trying to cast children who look like the actors playing their parents, meaning they miss out on hiring great ones who can give you performances you could never imagine.
“But I would never work with a cat again. That was a real prima donna! You can get the best animal wranglers in the world but the cat does what it wants to do!
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“You don’t feel time dragging quite like when you’re with your whole film crew, with the cameras running, waiting for a cat to do something. And it just sits there and licks its paws.”
Feline lovers may want to give it a miss, but for everybody else, The Innocents is one of the year’s most chilling cinema experiences – a deeply unnerving slow burn horror with some of the best child performances in recent memory.
Don’t expect to see these kids joining Professor X in the MCU anytime soon though.
This feature originally appeared in the May 2022 edition of The Lowdown. Read the full issue here.
