La Chambre des Morts (2007)

One night, two days before Christmas, in the suburbs of Dunkirk, two friends who work in IT and have been laid off as part of a mass redundancy plan take revenge on the company that has just fired them by spray-painting its premises. As they drive away, they accidentally run over a man, who dies instantly. The passenger, Sylvain, initially wants to call the police, but the driver, Vigo, fears a prison sentence despite the killing being unintentional, since he was driving drunk and over the speed limit. Because the accident happened in an isolated car park in a wind farm, where they believe there were no witnesses, he eventually persuades his friend, out of solidarity, to keep quiet, help him get rid of the body, and flee. What is more, the man was carrying an unusually large amount of money. This leads them to imagine that their victim was a criminal, for whom they feel no remorse, and persuades them to keep the money to put an end to their financial hardship. The next day, the body of a girl of about ten is found in a warehouse overlooking the site of the accident. It turns out that she had been kidnapped, and that the man they ran over was her father, who had come there to deliver the ransom for her release. The kidnapper, having witnessed what happened and realizing he could no longer get the money, decided to murder the little girl. The way the body was staged, the girl’s blindness (meaning she would not have been able to recognize the kidnapper anyway), and the fact that another little girl from a much poorer background (from whom he could hardly expect to get a ransom) is abducted soon afterwards lead investigators to believe that the killer’s motive is not purely financial. The second girl who is abducted is diabetic, and can survive for only forty hours on the medication she had with her when she was taken. The investigators therefore have to act quickly. Among them is Sergeant Lucie Henebelle, whose talent for profiling astonishes her superiors. A series of flashbacks and the final scene suggest to the viewer that, as a child, Lucie was present with the killer when he suffered the trauma that triggered his psychological instability.