A murder without a body, a family without a flaw. Rather a rare case, anyway crime scene, who not only plays on the dark side of life, but also increasingly wants to be a social seismograph. So inspector Anna Janneke (Margarita Broich) and colleague Paul Brix (Wolfram Koch) stay tuned when a lot of blood is found in the Frankfurt city forest, but no victim.
This thriller called “Darkness” starts in the dark and ends in the dark. At the center is a family that works hard to appear normal. Little by little, being torpedoes appearances, the adult daughters are at odds, the classic saying falls: “You don’t even know what’s going on here!” Right in the middle is Ulrich Gombrecht (great: Uwe Preuss), a vocational school teacher about to retire, who doesn’t think much of gender and also doesn’t care that his wife Maria wants to study in old age and is fasting in the Pyrenees. At least that was the plan. But her car is in the city forest, and the blood is hers too. Nevertheless, father and daughters are sure: She is not dead, she has done that many times, not to report, she just wants to be free. And anyway: There is no corpse. Lebbe goes weida. Must. Also for the patriarch who drives to chemo in between: leukemia.
Janneke and Brix investigate, dull as usual, they sit out some things, which is not wrong in the investigative profession, but gives this thriller some lengthy moments. Her wait-and-see manner suits Janneke from a technical point of view, she is a trained psychologist and senses that not only one person in the Gombrecht family is on the verge of a meltdown. That’s what’s so special about this film, for which Petra Lüschow wrote the book and also directs it. It’s all there, on the investigators’ table, there are an incredible number of video recordings, text messages, photos of everyone involved. In the end, even the mystery of the missing corpse is solved. But the key to murder is introspection. And that is abysmal.
Easter Monday, The First, 8:15 p.m.
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