“I didn’t have the heart to tell her.”

Brutal. The Guilty takes a premise similar to 2013’s Locke and amps the stakes all the way up. One man, one location, a constant stream of phone calls. I was not prepared for how deeply tense this was, nor how shocking the twists would be. Some of the events described in these emergency calls are absolutely grisly, but the restraint in not depicting any of it made it able to take (in small doses). This is incredible work for a debut, and the lead’s performance of such a flawed character was perfect. It was so compelling to see a character with so much passion who just was not built for the task…

The Guilty isn’t the movie I thought it was gonna be. To be honest, I had no clue what it was gonna be in the first place. From the cover alone, it looks like it’d be a pretty bland production. One could even make that exact argument against it, depending on what kind of movie they like. For me however, I was simply blown away by this. As a huge fan of 2009’s Pontypool, this has me on the edge of my seat. A film that takes place entirely in the confines of an  emergency dispatch office, we are able to sit in on a riveting abduction thriller all from the opposite end of general perspective. It’s fun listening in…

59/100

Does a solid if unremarkable job of sustaining visual interest while confined to a single bland location, and generates considerable suspense from noises heard tinnily through the protagonist's earpiece. Lead actor Jakob Cedergren (who'd previously wowed me in Malmros' Sorrow and Joy) is otherwise the whole show, and he deftly ricochets between testy entitlement and sincere compassion, with the latter somehow gradually becoming even more unprofessional than the former. Vague allusions to some past malfeasance worried me, but I wound up quite liking the way Möller and co-writer Emil Nygaard Albertsen eventually tie that revelation into the present-tense drama. My one sizable reservation—yes, I fear I must Go There—involves basic plausibility. I can rationalize (with some effort) each of…

I'm having difficulty scoring this. Yeah, I enjoyed the movie and thought it was executed well, but it also heavily relies on a number of contrivances relating to the premise. As a single location film, how heavily should those minor grievances weigh when scoring? What I'll say is that The Guilty is a perfectly serviceable and enjoyable film, but lacks the emotional gut-punch from other films in the genre like Locke.

As a police phone operator, our main protagonist plays into the film more than original anticipated. As he takes a call that inevitably becomes the center of the films plot, the details of the crime become the driving force while his own personal dilemma unveils itself through surprising ways.…

Thriller trepidante y violento ambientado en un solo espacio, al estilo de Enterrado (Buried, Rodrigo Cortés, 2010), pero en este caso en una oficina de recepción de llamadas de emergencia. La verdadera acción —el secuestro de una mujer— se está desarrollando ahí fuera y nosotros solo sabemos lo que ocurre por lo que el protagonista, un policía al que han relegado a ese puesto, escucha por teléfono, dejando para nuestra libre creación la construcción de las imágenes que corresponden a los sonidos al otro lado de la línea. El film es un entretenido y solvente experimento audiovisual que peca, sin embargo, de forzar la máquina con agujeros de guion para mantener la tensión, por no hablar de algunas flacas decisiones…

On a technical level, it's impressive the tension this film is able to wring out of its writers-workshop-prompt premise: it's a movie that takes place entirely in an emergency call center and whose action almost completely occurs via phone calls of which we only ever see the call-center side. It's not particularly showy in how it does it (though there's a bit with a red light near the end that is both obvious and beautiful), but The Guilty nearly perfectly balances shot length with editing in a way that's never ostentatious but always brutally effective in its drive toward a thriller intensity. On a thematic level, it's a remorseless little deconstruction of the hero impulse, showing at every turn how…