FNC review: The Guilty is a riveting single-location thriller

Bizarrely billed by FNC as a film made “in fine Hitchcockian (North by Northwest) fashion,” 2018’s The Guilty (Den skyldige) couldn’t be more different from that 1959 thriller. Where North by Northwest uses a series of dramatic locations – including the United Nations headquarters, Mount Rushmore, and perhaps most famously, a cornfield – to great effect, The Guilty relies on two tiny sets within one clinical, constrained location to reinforce the claustrophobic nervousness of the central narrative. Where North by Northwest is filled with sexual innuendo and sophisticated witticisms, The Guilty is sexually neutered (deliberately, I think) and offers a single (albeit very well-timed) joke. Perhaps most importantly, whereas arguably there is almost no true tragedy in North by Northwest, tragedy turns out to be the central theme of The Guilty, which skilfully explores culpability and the all-too-human need to deny our guilt and shame, as well as the catastrophic effects of that disavowal.

The film tracks one cop, Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergren), who’s been demoted to deskwork after an undisclosed abuse of power. The entire movie plays out in the last hour or so of his shift the night before the court case that may or may not exonerate him of guilt and misdoing. If all goes well with his trial, he’ll be back on his beat with his partner Rashid, but in the meantime Asger is stuck taking calls for Emergency Services.

I have always despised the John McClane genre of badass cops doing whatever the fuck they want – it makes me viscerally angry to see that kind of toxic masculinity heroized decade after decade, despite the massive damage wreaked by corrupt cops in the real world. So I was surprised to find myself, partway through The Guilty, coming about as close as I’ve ever come to cheering on a cop who was flagrantly ignoring due process: the entire movie centres around Asger’s desperate and sincere need to help a woman who calls in to communicate that she’s been abducted but has the horrifying constraint of trying to convey information to Emergency Services while in the presence of her abductor. She’s therefore unable to give Asger much information, and the rest of the film follows his attempts to save her, with extremely limited clues, before she is killed.

But to director and co-writer Gustav Möller’s credit, by the end of the film we see – in a truly terrifying détournement that strikes like a snake at the heart of our most sacred cultural beliefs – just how heinous the consequences of even a well-meaning vigilantism can be. Asger is forced to face the reality that he is, in fact, the guilty. And only by confronting his guilt can Asger finally start to save lives instead of destroying them. Taut, traumatic, and incredibly tense, The Guilty is an excellent thriller but not for the faint of heart. Indeed if you do watch The Guilty, I recommend following it with North by Northwest to decompress.

The Guilty screens as part of Festival du nouveau cinéma on Monday, October 8th at 3:00 pm at Cinema du Parc. For tickets and the complete schedule visit the official FNC site. The Guilty opens in theatres on October 19th.