‘The Guilty’: Single Location, Real-Time Thriller Crackles With Tension [Sundance Review]

This debut from Gustav Möller begins with an extreme close-up on a headset, as we hear frantic audio being received by emergency dispatcher Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergren). “The Guilty” soon zooms out, but it never goes very far. The tense Danish thriller is set exclusively in two adjoining rooms of the dispatch station; all the action happens off screen, over the phone in real time, as Asger desperately tries to help the woman on the other end.

Former cop Asger is manning a line at the Copenhagen version of 9-1-1 (1-1-2, if you’re ever in need in Denmark). We initially observe him responding callously to a few callers, blaming them for their trouble because of their own behavior. However, when he takes a call from Iben (voice of Jessica Dinnage), his experience on the police force kick in. She is currently in a car with her kidnapper, and Asger must discover where she is so that he can tell his police counterpart. Bouncing between calls with Iben and stations in Copenhagen and outside the city, Asger tries to save her with the limited tools he has while he’s stuck in the role of dispatcher, rather than cop, which others are quick to remind him of.

“The Guilty” unravels a pair of mysteries, slowly peeling back the layers of both Iben’s story and Asger’s. In its tight 85 minutes, the film parcels out answers in each, with many of the revelations earning a gasp. The script from Möller and Emil Nygaard Albertsen sometimes shows the puppeteers’ strings, but it’s engaging nonetheless.

To Möller’s credit, his first feature is more like “Locke” than “Phone Booth,” with the single location and the real-time approach feeling appropriate to the story he’s telling, rather than just a gimmick. We never see Iben or her peril, but we feel the urgency of her plight and Asger’s attempts at rescue at every moment. Those 85 minutes speed by, as we sympathize with Asger’s worry that time is running out to save her. Cinematographer Jasper Spanning ably captures his feelings of helplessness and being trapped, and we feel it keenly with him. This is grim stuff, and Spanning’s shots don’t let us forget it.

Credit should also go to Cedergren’s performance as Asger. We spend most of the film looking at the Swedish actor’s face, with his reactions to the people on the other end of the line as important as his own dialogue. He’s playing a complex character that we don’t quite understand until the movie is nearing its end. As the unseen Iben, Dinnage brings the audience through Asger’s earpiece and into the car with her. There’s real fear in every breath and syllable we hear.

For a debut, “The Guilty” might have seemed a easier project to execute logistically versus a movie with multiple sets or shooting locations, but it’s a more difficult approach to really nail than the standard one and Möller absolutely pulls it off. Done poorly, this movie would have been inert, drawing us in to neither Asger’s desire to help nor Iben’s danger. But Möller keeps a sense of immediacy and tension throughout, despite never actually showing the cause of Asger’s worry and dread – and our own. [B]

Click here for our complete coverage from the 2018 Sundance Film Festival