The Guilty

This is a simple but effective thriller – set in two rooms and largely focussed on one character, as a Danish police officer on dispatch duty finds himself involved in a case that spirals out of control. Jakob Cedergren plays the development from a bored desk officer to someone deeply invested in how the situation is going to pan out. Most of the film is just him and voices over the phone line, but we’re drawn in as tension builds. Director Gustav Moller has a sure sense for how to keep an audience gripped, playing out the situation largely in tight closeups and in apparent real-time. There are few bells and whistles here – this is a back –to-basics thriller that doesn’t need much adornment, and, inevitably, a US remake is planned shortly. But in the meantime this is an exercise in tension that should not be missed.