A young woman finds herself in the trunk of a car after being kidnapped from a rental office. Soon, she finds herself bargaining with her captor on the phone while he drives her around.
Written and directed by Jonas Kvist Jensen, this movie, to be honest, is unfortunate. It has good ideas, but the writing and direction kill these ideas completely. While the idea of being stuck in a car’s trunk can be terrifying, the way the film develops this idea is by taking the longest, least interesting route possible. The film is one of those that makes you wonder why you are watching pretty early on and then takes it up a notch and tries to put you to sleep. It took a few attempts to watch the whole thing and at this point in time, pretty much none of it stuck around on the brain. This film commits one of the biggest crimes of cinema by being bland. It’s not good, it’s not particularly bad (at least not enough to be fun), it’s just bland and so it loses the interest of this viewer in no time flat no matter what time of day the attempted viewings happened. 
The cast is mostly okay. Lead Katharina Sporrer is decent, her performance does what can be done with the script at hand. The character is not particularly likable, but she has a goal and it’s clear, so there is something to hold onto with her character and with her performance. Playing some of the few other characters, Caspar Phillipson and Hother Bøndorff (and Christopher de Courcy-Ireland voicing Bøndorff) both give odd performances. While the captor should be more imposing, scarier (or actually scary at all) and the father should be more caring, the way these characters are written here, there is no compassion from either and the performances that bring them to the screen shows this one-dimensionality very clearly. The acting isn’t great, but neither is the writing. 
The cinematography by Tobias Bendixen is one of the shining bits of this film, the framing and use of light in the trunk is very well done, showing us the claustrophobia a place like that could bring out of anyone while allowing the lead to take some room and be within this limited space. The editing by Martin Mortensen Søe is also decent, while the music which seemed ok while watching has been completely forgotten since.
The Girl in the Trunk has a great idea, one we’ve seen before but also one that has plenty of room for growth and makes the most middle ground film it could from there. The film commits the worst cinematic crime there is for this reviewer and it is bland as can be, sleep inducing even. Had it been a bit better or a bit worse, it would like rank higher on the list of films seen this month.