Exclusive Clip From 'The Guilty', Denmark's Oscar Submission, Features A Call For Help
The Guilty finds tense, clever ways to make a one-location film exciting. The Danish thriller finds an emergency dispatcher trying to save a kidnapped woman after receiving a panicked call. In an exclusive The Guilty clip below, you can see the moment that launches the entire film into motion, as the dispatcher (Jakob Cedergren) receives the call.
The Guilty Clip
The Guilty, which looks like an icier, more compact version of the Halle Berry thriller The Call, had its premiere at this year's Sundance Film Festival, where it garnered overwhelmingly positive reviews (it's currently sitting at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes). The film will next play Fantastic Fest before opening in theaters next month. Ahead of the Fantastic Fest debut, you can check out the exclusive clip above. It's brief, but it's to the point, establishing the slow-burn tone to come.
A movie set in one location can be tricky. It can either make for a focused, claustrophobic story, or it can backfire spectacularly. It looks like The Guilty thankfully falls into the former category, with RogerEbert.com saying, "This polished, well-calibrated thriller is a best-in-class showcase of the possibilities of cinema even with the most limited of resources." And The Village voice calling the movie "A claustrophobic thriller that finds fascinating ways to transcend, spiritually, its confines."
You can expect The Guilty to end up as part of the awards season buzz as well. The film has been selected by Denmark as their official entry into the Foreign Language Oscar race.
The Guilty, starring Jakob Cedergren, Jessica Dinnage, Omar Shargawi, Johan Olsen and directed by Gustav Möller, will open in theaters October 19, 2018.
The Guilty Trailer
When police officer Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergren) is demoted to deskwork, 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 mindspace.