Netflix’s The Innocents puts a horror twist on… | Little White Lies

Not Movies

Netflix’s The Inno­cents puts a hor­ror twist on teenage romance

09 Aug 2018

Words by Catherine Pearson

Two people embracing in a dimly lit room, their profiles visible against a dark background.
Two people embracing in a dimly lit room, their profiles visible against a dark background.
It may look like your aver­age YA fod­der, but there’s some­thing sin­is­ter lurk­ing beneath the sur­face of this super­nat­ur­al drama.

The poster for Netflix’s The Inno­cents has all the trap­pings of a Twi­light-esque teen romance. The visu­al allu­sions to the YA vam­pire saga are clear: two young lovers are bathed in pale light, save for the bright red of Netflix’s logo and the bright blue of pro­tag­o­nist June’s (Sor­cha Ground­sell) eyes as she clings to her boyfriend Har­ry (Per­celle Ascott). You may think you’ve seen this sto­ry before. The trail­er, how­ev­er, hints at some­thing very different.

Set amid the vast splen­dour of rur­al Nor­way, we catch a glimpse of what appears to be some sort of secret test­ing facil­i­ty. We see June wired up to elec­trodes as Guy Pierce’s Halvo­son watch­es on behind a wall of glass. June is clear­ly dif­fer­ent. And so is the show. Of course, a series about two run­away teens whose love threat­ens to harm them can­not be divorced from the tropes we know all too well.

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Bel­la Swan’s con­cerned and some­what com­i­cal­ly threat­en­ing pater­nal fig­ure in Twi­light here takes the form of June’s force­ful father, John (Sam Hazel­dine), and her broth­er, Ryan (Arthur Hugh­es), who must over­come his own fear of the wider world to ensure his sister’s future. June and Har­ry are nev­er far from being caught. While their fam­i­lies are con­cerned for the pair’s well­be­ing, the mys­te­ri­ous and impos­ing Steinar (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhan­nes­son) is hot on their trail – and it’s not entire­ly clear if he means them well.

A woman with long curly hair and a serious expression, appearing in a dark setting with blurred background elements.

The sto­ry enters fresh ter­ri­to­ry by com­bin­ing ele­ments of teen romance with the icy aes­thet­ic of Nordic noir and some hor­ri­fy­ing phys­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion – June finds her­self shift­ing into the bod­ies of oth­ers while her vic­tim lies motion­less, their eyes flit­ting back and forth as though they are hav­ing a seizure. It is an abil­i­ty that she both doesn’t want and can­not con­trol and, to her ter­ror, a pow­er that leaves her vic­tims in a crit­i­cal condition.

It’s a hor­ror trope as old as time: the young woman who doesn’t know her own strength. We see June at the same stage in life as many of her hor­ror coun­ter­parts, tee­ter­ing on the brink of wom­an­hood and dis­cov­er­ing the bur­geon­ing pow­er with­in her.

We’ve all seen the very lit­er­al allu­sion to Carrie’s com­ing of age when the pris­tine prom queen becomes a blood-drenched mon­ster in Bri­an De Palma’s 1976 hor­ror clas­sic, and in The Inno­cents June falls vic­tim to a sim­i­lar curse. She is a young, vir­ginal woman who sud­den­ly wakes up to her bur­geon­ing sex­u­al desire and, with it, her own mon­strous capabilities.

As with many a hor­ror hero­ine, June must nav­i­gate her desires, new­found pow­er and per­son­al rela­tion­ships and make it out alive. All the while, we’re left hold­ing out for the hap­py end­ing we’ve come to expect from teenage romance.

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