Im Abgrund (2020)

After fifteen years in prison, child murderer Joseph Maria Hagenow is released. The police believe he still poses a serious threat and want to keep him under round-the-clock surveillance as a precaution. David Wallat, the investigator who put Hagenow behind bars back then, leads the team tasked with keeping him in sight. The small special investigation unit also includes Eric Thuner and Lisa Kampe. Just a few days after Hagenow’s release, eight-year-old Max Garschke disappears after Hagenow manages to evade constant surveillance one night. Wallat has no doubt that Hagenow has become a perpetrator again, and Lisa Kampe is convinced too. Only Eric Thuner takes a neutral view of the evidence and points out that the boy might have run away, or that there might be other reasons for his disappearance. While Hagenow vehemently denies responsibility for Max’s disappearance during questioning, the forest is searched meticulously for the child. As fifteen years earlier, there is a fear that Hagenow is holding the boy in a box somewhere underground. If Max is not found in time, he could die of thirst or even suffocate. To force Hagenow to confess, Kampe and Wallat take him to a remote forest cabin and torture him. They have deliberately kept Thuner, who has repeatedly insisted that the law applies to everyone, in the dark. He has decided to check out other suspects as well. Stefan Prawitt, a car mechanic who is repeatedly seen near Max’s mother, seems suspicious to him. Thuner secretly searches Prawitt’s house and finds a torn-up drawing in the trash that strikes him as highly suspicious. In the end, however, it turns out that Prawitt used the drawing to make Max not a box, but a wooden toy car. When Hagenow still refuses to confess despite the torture, Wallat presses a gun to his temple and threatens to shoot him. Fortunately, Thuner arrives and manages to defuse the situation. He implores Wallat to remember that they are people who have to obey the law. If they do not, they are no better than Hagenow. Because of Wallat’s unauthorized action, Hagenow is able to use his lawyer to have the surveillance stopped immediately and the special investigation unit disbanded. Kampe and Wallat will have to answer legally for what they did and are suspended for the time being. Wallat does not give up, however. He wants to find Max and continues to surveil Hagenow alone, who now feels safe without police guards. But when Wallat’s wife suddenly turns up at Hagenow’s, looking for her husband, Hagenow is alerted. First, Hagenow kills the priest with whom he is staying, then takes Eva Wallat hostage to lure her husband to him. It works, and once Hagenow has them both in his power, he forces them to go into the forest. There, he makes David Wallat dig, revealing the boy’s hiding place—the one the policeman has been searching for over the past fifteen years. This allows him to finally close that old case. He is also able to dig Max out there; exhausted but alive, the boy is lying in a box. Thuner, who has followed Wallat’s trail, overpowers Hagenow and ultimately shoots him in self-defense.