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The Reel Review

B

Karoline, impoverished and on the brink of homelessness in post-World War I, 1919 Copenhagen, is stopped from performing an abortion on herself by a woman who tells her she runs a secret adoption agency and can place her child with a good family. But once the baby is born, Karoline discovers that she has become part of a sinister plot, in this crime drama/horror based on the true story of Danish serial killer Dagmar Overbye.

Vic Carmen Sonne in The Girl with the Needle

The Girl with the Needle is a well-made but relentlessly grim story about the depths of depravity experienced by people on the fringes of society. Vic Carmen Sonne (Godland, Holiday), as the very desperate Karoline, displays an unsettling, dead-in-the-eyes gaze that, set to a filthy backdrop of post-war Copenhagen, is suffocating. Evicted from her home and uncertain if her husband who fought in the war is alive or dead, she begins an affair with the owner of the factory where she works. When she becomes pregnant, the weak man’s wealthy mother verifies Karoline’s pregnancy, fires her from her job and kicks her out of their home, setting the stage for Trine Dyrholm to arrive as the would-be savior/secret serial killer.

Trine Dyrholm in The Girl with the Needle

Shot in black and white with characters lit from underneath to look more ghoulish, director Magnus Von Horn (Sweat, The Here After) creates a depressing tale about the face of evil that frankly, while well done, is a very hard watch. There is nothing fun about this dour film. The story is also diminished by a bit by some contrived fictional plot twists in the third act and nods to German expressionism (blinking eye, anyone?) that seem a bit jarring given the film’s otherwise oppressive tone.

REEL FACTS

The Girl With the Needle is Denmark’s 2025 Oscar-nominated entry for Best International Film and the third nomination in that category starring Trine Dyrholm after 2010’s In A Better World and 2012’s A Royal Affair.

• In real life, the actual Karoline went immediately to police after giving up her infant to Dagmar and being unable to get her back. Dagmar Overbye is believed to have killed from nine to as many as several dozen newborn infants via several means – incineration in her kitchen’s oven, drowning and strangling.

The Girl With the Needle was filmed in Copenhagen, Denmark and central and southern Poland.

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