Magnus von Horn’s The Girl with the Needle is more than a film—it’s an excavation, peeling back layers of history to expose the quiet, insidious horrors that lurk beneath civility. Set in 1919 Copenhagen, in the uneasy silence left by war, the film pulses with the weight of its protagonist Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne), a young wet nurse drawn into the operations of a shadowy adoption agency. But there is something else—a truth far more disturbing, stitched into every glance, every cry left unanswered.

What makes The Girl with the Needle extraordinary isn’t just its raw storytelling but its intimacy. Shot in arresting black-and-white, the film feels like a series of old photographs, ghostly yet alive, moments frozen just before or after unspeakable acts. The cinematography renders Copenhagen as a city of contrasts—light sneaking into shadows, innocence trespassing upon corruption.

This is a crime story unlike the sensationalized brutality we often consume. There are no grand confrontations, no forced revelations. Instead, horror festers in the corners of everyday life. We are left to sit in the quiet discomfort of historical complicity—the same society that hides its sins in plain sight, punishing the vulnerable while letting its real architects disappear into the pages of history.

The film is loosely inspired by Dagmar Overbye, the Danish serial killer responsible for the deaths of numerous infants. But its power doesn’t come from recounting her crimes; rather, it emerges from the unspoken, the unscreamed. Karoline herself becomes a figure of haunting ambiguity—both observer and participant, victim and possible accomplice. Vic Carmen Sonne’s performance is devastating in its restraint; a single look from her eyes holds volumes.

Von Horn doesn’t offer easy moralities. Instead, he asks the harder question: when does neglect become violence? When does looking away become complicity?

Dagmar Overbye: The Monster in Plain Sight

At the heart of the film’s inspiration lies Dagmar Overbye, one of Denmark’s most notorious murderers. Between 1913 and 1920, Overbye ran an “adoption service” in Copenhagen, preying on vulnerable mothers who sought better lives for their infants. Instead of caring for the children, she systematically murdered them—strangling, drowning, or burning their bodies.

What makes Overbye’s case particularly horrifying is how her crimes remained undetected for years, hidden within a system that treated unwanted children as disposable. Society’s indifference allowed her to operate freely, until one mother—unlike so many before her—demanded answers. Her eventual arrest in 1920 led to one of Denmark’s most infamous trials, ending in a death sentence (later commuted to life in prison).

The film does not depict Overbye’s crimes in a direct, documentary fashion. Instead, it breathes life into the atmosphere of neglect and moral decay that made her atrocities possible. Trine Dyrholm’s performance as Dagmar is chilling in its restraint—she doesn’t embody the stereotype of a deranged killer but rather something more unsettling: an ordinary woman who simply ceased to see human life as valuable.

Shadows, Sound, and Silence

If Vic Carmen Sonne carries the film’s weight, Trine Dyrholm injects it with a quiet, almost religious menace. Hers is not a portrait of overt evil but of something far more terrifying—routine cruelty. The way she moves, speaks, and watches makes it clear: she does not need to be violent to be in control. Dyrholm’s performance feels like an extension of the film’s atmosphere, chilling without theatrics.

Cinematographer Michał Dymek turns early 20th-century Copenhagen into a landscape of sorrow. The stark black-and-white imagery does more than set a mood—it traps the film’s characters in a world where all warmth has drained away. Light feels like an intruder, casting long, invasive shadows. Every frame is meticulously composed, echoing the stillness of photographs from another era. The cinematography doesn’t just capture time—it suffocates within it.

Adding to this oppressive air is the film’s soundtrack by Pawel Mykietyn, which operates less as music and more as an atmospheric pulse. Its eerie, minimalist compositions creep in like whispers from another room, a reminder that horror need not scream—it only needs to linger. The sound design amplifies this effect, making silence feel as deafening as any score.