The Girl with the Needle · reception & legacy
2024 · Magnus von Horn
How The Girl with the Needle has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Premiered in competition at Cannes 2024 to strong but stomach-clenched reviews, then snowballed through awards season into a Best International Feature Oscar nomination — the rare case where 'the year's most harrowing film' became the Academy pitch rather than the warning label.
What's debated
The fight it starts every time: is this a masterly dark fairy tale or just gorgeously shot miserablism — a 'finely crafted wallow' that punishes you for two hours and calls it art?
Its footprint
It became the go-to answer to 'the scariest film of the year isn't a horror film' — its German Expressionist black-and-white look and that nightmarish opening montage of morphing faces circulated far beyond people who'd actually sat through it.
Where it stands
A fast canon-climber on the 'beautiful misery' shelf — the black-and-white European art film Letterboxd users log with a one-word review ('devastated') and a badge-of-honour star rating.
Named by the director
Influences Magnus von Horn has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.
- Oliver Twist (1948) — Von Horn and cinematographer Michał Dymek studied Lean's film as a key reference for the black-and-white period look.
- The Elephant Man (1980) — Named as a touchstone for the film's monochrome, industrial-era nightmare atmosphere.
- Schindler's List (1993) — Von Horn called it 'on the top for black and white cinematography and staging'.
- Freaks (1932) — Cited among the film's touchstones for its sideshow world and empathy for outsiders.
- The Exorcist (1973) — Von Horn asked Trine Dyrholm to channel Regan in shaping Dagmar's unnerving presence.
- The Lighthouse (2019) — Willem Dafoe's unhinged lighthouse keeper was the other performance reference he gave Dyrholm.
- F.W. Murnau — Cited German Expressionism, and Murnau in particular, as the basis for the film's visual language.
- Charlie Chaplin — A body-language reference von Horn gave his lead, alongside silent-era Danish star Asta Nielsen.