It’s been a while since a trailer has made me feel like I’m on the edge of my seat in anxious anticipation of what’s about happen, but that is exactly what the new trailer for “The Guilty” has done.
The first half of this nerve-wracking trailer has you sitting wondering what direction “The Guilty” may take, as it appears that the dispatch operator played by Jakob Cedergren seems to not care about his job or the lives on the other end of the call. Just as he falls asleep at his desk and you decide you’re probably not going to like this man, he gets a call that springs him into action and sets your heart pumping.
The winner of the 2018 Sundance Audience Award: World Cinema Dramatic, “The Guilty,” which offers some similarities to the 2013 Halle Berry crime thriller “The Call,” follows police officer Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergren). After he is demoted to desk work, he expects a sleepy beat as an emergency dispatcher. That all changes when he answers a panicked phone call from a kidnapped woman who then disconnects abruptly. Asger, confined to the police station, is forced to use others as his eyes and ears as the severity of the crime slowly becomes more clear. The search to find the missing woman and her assailant will take every bit of his intuition and skill, as a ticking clock and his own personal demons conspire against him. This innovative and unrelenting Danish thriller uses a single location to great effect, ratcheting up the tension as twists pile up and secrets are revealed. Director Gustav Möller expertly frames the increasingly messy proceedings against the clean Scandinavian sterility of the police department, while Cedergren’s strong performance anchors the film and places the audience squarely in Holm’s tragically flawed yet well-intentioned mind space.
The film was written and directed by Danish creator Gustav Möller and is slated for U.S. release on October 19, 2018 via Magnolia Pictures. You can watch the trailer below: