- Directed by Marc Schießer
- Written by Marc Schießer
- Stars Sina Martens, Luise Helm, Artjom Gilz, Charles Rettinghaus
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 36 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfHeq3qVBoE
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
For a movie with a very small cast that mostly takes place in a small enclosed space, this was really entertaining. Sina Martens is excellent as Malina trying to deal with her situation. We would highly recommend it.
Synopsis
Malina wakes up in the trunk of a car as it begins to rain. There’s something wrong with her legs, and she sees a bag of her stuff on the ground outside. She digs in the bag for her phone as a man approaches. She fakes being unconscious. When he arrives, he throws her bag in the dumpster and shuts her in. Credits roll.
As the car drives off with her in the trunk, she calls her boyfriend, Enno, but she only gets his voice mail. Then she notices Enno’s hat in the trunk with her– maybe he’s not gonna answer that phone, ever.
Her sister Mona calls to jabber about some nonsense, but she won’t shut up long enough to hear what Malina’s got to say and then she thinks it’s a joke and hangs up. Then she loses signal, and her battery is at 76%. She watches a video on her phone that shows them preparing to hitch-hike to Frankfurt and then it shows them being abducted.
Mona sends her a web page about how to get out of the trunk, but she still thinks it’s all a joke. Malina tries the things on the website, but they don’t help. Malina gets through to Emergency Services, but they can only see what cell tower her call is going through, not her location.
In the middle of that call, Malina’s father calls, ranting about them leaving town without telling him. He, also, won’t shut up and listen. She finally gets him to believe her, but he won’t call the police– he wants to know about ransom, but they aren’t after that.
About this time, Malina notices that she’s got a big cut on her side, and it’s still bleeding. Staple stitches have popped open. She thinks they’ve taken her kidney. She then vomits and passes out for a while. Using what she has on hand in the trunk, she works to sew her wound closed. She hears the man front telling someone on the phone that “we’ll be there in an hour, and you can have what’s left of her.” Her phone is at 60%.
Emergency Services call her back; the police have been dispatched and are looking for her, but there’s not really a procedure for all this. She then finds out that her Internet quota for the month has been used up and she’s being throttled by the phone company– perfect timing.
The driver stops for gas, and she screams for help. The kidnapper opens the trunk, surprised that she’s even awake. He promises not to kill her if she just stops screaming. “Don’t make me cut off your tongue.” He shuts her back inside and drives off again.
She calls Elisa, the emergency person, back, and they report that they’ve found Enno, and he’s OK. They also report that they have demanded ransom, but her father is refusing to pay. Turns out, Malina’s a doctor, and on her second surgery, she accidentally killed someone, and now she thinks that this is all done in revenge.
Melina manages to get the tire iron loose and starts banging at the inside of the tail light. When she knocks that loose, she can see what’s happening behind the car, and it’s all very dramatic.
She looks at her phone and sees a message that she’s crossed over into the Czech Republic, and she can’t call Emergency Services from there. Elisa calls her back after they figure that out.
She gets a very strange call from Enno, who seems to be talking to her father, but he can’t hear her for some reason. He says he’s in a car too, but if they’re stopped by the police, he’ll be killed.
The phone rings again; Malina’s father has paid the ransom, but they haven’t heard anything back from the kidnappers. The kidnapping seems to have nothing to do with the botched operation a while back; this is something new.
Elisa calls back and says they are following the car. The kidnappers are calling from Enno’s phone. Or– is Enno actually the kidnapper? The car is now on a ferry crossing a lake; the police know where she is but can’t get to her.
Enno calls and apologizes for selling her kidney; the kidnapping wasn’t supposed to go like this. He’s not sure he’s going to get out of it alive; he had debts and shady deals, and he stole money. He had no other way out of his problems. He’s… not sympathetic. She sends him her ultrasound photo and tells him that she’s pregnant with his child; does he want to kill his own son? He didn’t know she was pregnant and that does change his mind.
We cut outside to see Enno sitting in the front seat next to the driver. He tells the driver he thinks he can get a lot more money if they’re let go, but the driver refuses to let anyone go. Enno whines and begs, but the driver is a professional. Enno eyes the knife in the glove compartment.
We cut back to Malina just as the car crashes. The trunk opens, and Enno is standing there. At least he’s standing there until the driver shoots him and dumps him in the trunk as well. The driver throws Malina’s phone away before getting back in the car and driving on.
Enno quickly dies in the trunk, but Malina finds the knife in his pocket. Using the knife, she pries open the spare tire wheel well, which has a rusty hole in the bottom. She reaches down and drags the tire iron under the car against one of the tires, which breaks something loose. The whole car goes off the road and into the water.
The trunk starts flooding. She kicks through the back seat and swims past the dead driver, out through the windshield, and up to the surface. The police arrive; she’ll be OK.
Commentary
Well, that was fun. In a tense kind of way.
This is really well filmed, all inside a trunk and all closeups, mostly in the dark. Still, it works really well. Regardless of all that, this seems like a really big trunk for a European car.
It’s very tense. Even though there’s almost zero action, it never gets boring and keeps us guessing as the mystery plays out. We only see three characters and hear three others on the phone, so it’s got a tiny cast and probably a low budget, but it all works really well.