A conflicted alarm dispatcher receives a call from a kidnapped woman, and the lines between legal and moral start to fade.
A one-location superb thriller! The Guilty is yet another example of how… let’s quote George Clooney: “It’s possible for me to make a bad movie out of a good script, but I can’t make a good movie from a bad script.” Here, writer Emil Nygaard Albertsen, editor Carla Luffe, and co-writer/director Gustav Möller have conceived, developed and climaxed something spectacular. They have perfectly balanced the plot – the alarm dispatcher and the horror of the kidnapped woman and her two children, and the subplot – Anger Holm’s (Jakob Cedergren) personal background story that affects him, his job, and his collaboration with his colleagues.
What you are about to experience is a purely one-location thriller where everything is left to your imagination. The dialogue, the dietetic (natural) sounds, and Holm’s reactions to the actions and reactions caused fill your imagination with images that compensate for what you don’t see. Moreover, listen to how the natural sounds increase at times and then how they die out entirely. The power of offscreen narrative generates a film inside your head, probably worse than any visual can portray. And that’s the story. The character of Anger Holm is as solid. His unorthodox methods will make you question what you would have done if you were in his shoes, as well as the ethics, morality and legality behind them.
Alfred Hitchcock led the way with one-location thrillers such as Lifeboat (1944) and Rear Window (1954). Great directors have ever since experimented with transitions from closeups to middle shots and more in between to make the visuals engaging. My previous review was The Vigil (2019): https://kaygazpro.com/the-vigil-2019/, and before that, Monolith (2022): https://kaygazpro.com/monolith-2022/. Compare and contrast and see how effective yet different one-location films can be.
So, let’s conclude with… the twist! What a twist! Just wait for it! And from that moment on… that moment of revealed truth… till the end… it will cut your breath…
Thanks for reading!
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