Not just another Lisbeth Salander mystery.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Oscar Quest ’25 continues! Once again we see how many among the latest wave of Academy Award nominees I can catch before the big ABC ceremony, no matter how dark or disturbing or draining.

The Substance and Nosferatu are the highest-profile nominees from the realm of horror, but farther down the ballot is a smaller tale of terror out of Denmark — The Girl with the Needle, inspired by the true story of a serial killer with a very specific, defenseless prey. Its nightmares are measured not in buckets of blood, but by the breadth of its unhealed psychological scars.

Director Magnus von Horn (co-writing with Line Langebek) takes us back to the hard times not long after World War I, rendered in black-and-white period-drear. Vic Carmen Sonne (the missionary’s love interest in 2022’s Oscar-shortlisted Godland) is a factory seamstress named Karoline who’s still waiting for her husband to return home from the battle lines. As his prolonged absence leaves her impoverished — bereft of a widow’s pension because they can’t even confirm he’s dead — she yields to her handsome manager’s temptations and, after a brief yet sincere courtship, is enchanted by the sudden prospect of motherhood and remarriage. And they all live happily ever after!

Except her would-be mother-in-law yanks off Prince Charming’s studly facade to reveal a pampered mama’s-boy with no actual house or money to call his own (just like Anora, minus kink and video games). Her situation direr than ever, Karoline attempts drastic measures to “solve” at least one “problem” with a large needle in a public bathhouse. (I had to look up the popular alternative. As of 1919, abortion in Denmark was wholly illegal and punishable by up to eight years’ hard labor. It used to be worse: for a while in the seventeenth century, the punishment was execution.)

The deed is excruciating to watch even as it goes awry, but someone else sees her, not just us squeamish witnesses out here. At the next tub over is an older woman named Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm from Starz’ Mary & George), a candy shop owner with young daughter in tow. She cordially offers Karoline shelter, comfort, and the services of her sideline gig. In between straightening her candy jars, she also ostensibly arranges backdoor adoption services for poor women who can’t afford the babies they just had and hope they can be brought up in better homes. Karoline sees her pregnancy through, takes Dagmar up on her offer, bids her babe farewell, begins working as her shopgirl, and they all live happily ever after!

Side complications arise when her husband Peter (Besir Zeciri) turns up alive after all. His lack of death still means no pension for her, and his postwar career options are virtually nil due to severe facial mutilation. (Readers of Ennis and Dillon’s Preacher will be reminded of a certain character’s distinctive visage. The film’s makeup team does an astounding, unsettling job of simulating that same sort of indelible damage, down to the uncontrolled drooling.) He’s no more able to help Karoline out of the gutter than she was on her own, and he’s suffering PTSD as well. Sonne juggles disgust and guilt and at least a remaining shred of love as Karoline’s heart breaks and she cannot cope with his new needs or cover room and board for both of them. Life goes on with Dagmar, and they all live happily ever after!

Except, making matters the absolute worst, the “adoptions” are a lie. The real-life subject of The Girl with the Needle is Dagmar Overbye, who feigned her child-caregiver services and, after each young mother paid her to take away their baby, waited till they were gone before murdering them. She had at least nine confirmed kills, possibly more than twice that all told. We and Karoline recoil in disgust at two full scenes of baby murder. The infants themselves are shielded from our eyes at the moment of, so we’re not forced to watch their expressions. Nonetheless, each scene follow the moments before to the moments after, and the chilling chasm of silence that separates them.

The black-and-white design offers coldest comfort, intensifies the darkness of the deeds, bears slivers of chiaroscuro refuge, and haunts all the more intensely with a score by Frederikke Hoffmeier that slashes at us with its discordant sonic shards. Through poor Karoline we feel the helplessness of all involved and the inadequacy of the courtroom trial at the end, where Dagmar protests with remorseless indignation that she merely provided a service all these poor girls were too weak to carry out themselves. Somehow she’s the real hero here, leaving a struggling society with fewer mouths to feed here in the no-man’s land between eugenics and madness.

And in her mind, Karoline and all those girls would live happily ever after.

…

Meanwhile in the customary MCC film breakdowns:

Hey, look, it’s that one actor!: Ms. Sonne was pretty much it for recognition factor from me, though Blockbuster Video members who couldn’t get enough of Full Moon horror flicks back in the day might be overjoyed to see Anders Hove, star of the Subspecies series, as the judge at Dagmar’s trial at the end.

For the Danish TV fans out there, two cast members — Benedikte Hansen, who plays the factory manager’s mom/meal-ticket; and Søren Sætter-Lassen, who plays a circus ringmaster — had recurring roles on Forbrydelsen, which was later remade Stateside as the AMC series The Killing.

How about those end credits? No, there’s no scene after The Girl with the Needle end credits, which are mostly in Danish, though I believe I spotted the standard “no animals were harmed in the making of this film” disclaimer. It’s possible they replaced “animals” with “babies”, in case any Danish authorities had sneaking suspicions to the contrary.