There is no shortage nowadays of movies with interesting ideas, but it’s generally in the execution that they falter. Trunk: Locked In is a German film directed by Marc Schieber that not only has an intriguing premise but a fantastic execution as well. The idea is not entirely new. Films like Buried and Guilty have had a go at it in their own ways, but Trunk: Locked In gets the best of both worlds. It has the claustrophobia from Buried coupled with the thrilling investigation by a police officer from their control room, as seen in “Guilty.” The economy of characters allowed Scheiber to experiment with shot composition and weird cinematography that seem inspired by Gaspar Noe. Everything works in this claustrophobic thriller, and the smartest thing about it is the exposition, which does not give the audience too much time to apply their analytical minds to assess the plot. We got into the action pretty much from the get-go, and what a ride it turned out to be.
Spoilers Ahead
Plot Synopsis: What Happens In The Film?
Malina wakes up and finds herself unable to move her legs in the trunk of a car. The trunk wasn’t closed, so she got a chance to look around. Her mobile and other belongings were nearby, at an arm’s length, placed on the road in a trash bag. Malina got her hands on the phone before the driver arrived. What had happened? Had she been kidnapped? She couldn’t remember, but all she could think about was her boyfriend, Enno. The driver threw her stuff away while she pretended to be unconscious. He wasn’t aware that she had gotten her phone out of the trash bag or that she was faking her slumber. She didn’t have much time to figure out why she had been kidnapped and where Enno was. She got through to her dad and realized that the kidnapping could be related to a case where she’d operated on a girl but could not save her.
Why Couldn’t Malina Move Her Legs?
Malina had a perfect opportunity to get out of the trunk when she gained consciousness. But her legs were numb. Now that she was trapped and the car was moving, she tried to use the phone’s flashlight to figure out what had happened. It turns out there was a gaping wound near her waist on the left side. Apparently, she had been operated on and lost quite a lot of blood. By examining the position of the wound and the stitches that had come open, she came to the conclusion that her kidney had been extracted. The driver was an organ trafficker, and she got hold of her phone to call the police. There was still hope for her as the phone had a healthy battery as she tried to tell Elisa, the officer on the other end, about her whereabouts. But before that, she used all her medical skill to stitch up the wound using her shoelace and her pointy earring. She started to feel her legs again, but she was far from getting out of the trunk. The warning sign was that Enno’s cap was in the trunk. He had been beaten up by the driver, and she couldn’t remember what had happened next.
Why Did Malina’s Father Not Want Her To Talk To The Police?
Malina found her camera in the trunk and saw the photos and videos on it, and it all came rushing back to her. She had run away from her home, giving up on her career as a doctor. All because she thought she had found her one true love. She was having the time of her life traveling all around Germany, with plans to leave the place. The driver came out of the blue and ruined it for them. In fact, she had made a video by secretly recording him. He had drugged her and put her in the trunk, but the recording was still ongoing, and she got a good look at it, where his face was clearly visible. She sent the photo to her father. When her father did connect to her on call, he told her about the Gabriels, whose daughter had died, and they blamed Malina, who was the operating doctor. They wanted revenge, and Malina’s father had paid a huge sum to keep them quiet. But Malina had felt so guilty that she had left her medical career altogether. Her father was paranoid that the Gabriels might have tapped her phone, and that if she talked to the police, then the driver might end up killing her.
Why Did Enno Let Malina Get Kidnapped?
Elisa, the officer, was handling her first kidnapping. She wanted more information out of Malina so that she could locate the car she was in. Malina too showed courage, as she continued to talk to her even after her father’s concerns. Elisa tried her best to track her location, but at the pace they were moving, it was quite difficult. Elisa had gotten the photo of the driver after contacting Malina’s father, but it was of no use. Elisa got Malina to call for help if the driver ever stopped for gas. But the gas station was at a remote location, and her screams didn’t help. She did hear that she would be killed at 4:30 a.m.
The Gabriels had nothing to do with the kidnapping. Her father must have used his men to find out if the Gabriels were behind the kidnapping. Someone had used an online anonymous messaging service to ask for a ransom, and he had to pay it. There was no other way. Whoever the driver was working for was a dangerous person, and nobody knew anything about them. Elisa was hopeful that the roadblocks set up would help in catching the man, but he took a different route and crossed the border into the Czech Republic.
Malina tried using all the resources available to her in the trunk to find out the car’s plate number, and she succeeded. But all that was in vain. She had gotten through to Enno, and he was making it seem like he was kidnapped. He was actually sitting right beside the driver, and he was the one who had let it all happen. Enno was in a lot of debt to the driver and the people he worked for. Enno thought that getting Malina kidnapped was a sure way of getting money from her wealthy father. But the driver had his own plans. He decided to kidnap both Enno and Malina. She found this out too late, as she saw the footage again and saw Enno walking casually behind the driver while he was putting her in the trunk. The fight earlier had been staged, and it seemed to terrify her. The little bit of doubt was removed when Elisa found out the number the anonymous text had been sent from, and it was Enno’s mobile number.
Enno thought he had pulled a really neat trick, but now he was in trouble too. The driver was a volatile man who could kill him as well. Malina was distraught to learn that Enno had broken her trust. She had left everything for him, and this is where it had led her. She did tell him that she was pregnant with his son, and that made Enno fight against the driver to let her go.
During Trunk: Locked In‘s ending, the driver killed Enno and put the body in the trunk with Malina. He threw her phone away as well. Now she was left with only one option: to get to the toolbox at the bottom of the trunk and somehow wedge a long iron bar into one of the wheels to cause the driver to lose control. She had already made a dent at the bottom of the trunk and got an iron bar from the toolbox (which she wanted to hit the driver with earlier) to get stuck in the wheel. The driver lost control, and the car ended up in a lake. Malina, who had a ‘VI’ marked on her forearm, was apparently the sixth victim that the driver had to take care of. But she survived, getting out of the trunk and reaching the surface of the lake. The police had arrived, and surely they would save her. The driver was unconscious, and it looks like he will drown. If he had the faintest sense that she was getting away, he would have pulled her back and tried to get out himself, but he was motionless. The accident had knocked him out, and the lake seems to have become Enno’s and the driver’s grave.
