Nick Cafemeyer is a Belgian police detective with a troubled past. When he was younger, his brother Bjorn was abducted in front of his very eyes by their pedophile neighbour, Ivan Plettinckx, and was never seen again. Investigating a highly disturbing serial kidnapper known only as The Troll, Nick will soon find his past catching up with him in ways beyond even his worst nightmares.
Tropes:
- Adaptational Villainy: Nancy Lammers lacks her novel counterpart's Freudian Excuse and is shown to have played a far more active role in Ivan's pedophile ring (such as maintaining a website for the ring and posting footage online for other pedophiles), effectively becoming his number two.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Bjorn is left to suffer an excruciating and drawn out death by starvation at the end of the film, having been abandoned to his fate by Nancy and unknowingly doomed by his own brother.
- Defective Detective: Nick never recovered from his sexual abuse or his brother's abduction at the hands of Ivan, and spends his entire detective career attempting to find out the truth of what happened.
- Downer Ending: Although The Troll, Roland Claeren, is arrested and the Vankerkhove's are rescued everyone involved is scarred for life by the ordeal and it's implied the family may fall apart in the same way as Claren's other victims. Nick also ceases to believe Nancy knows anything and jails her, resulting in his brother facing a horrific drawn out death by starvation, with the final shot of the film being him banging on the caravan window and begging Nancy to let him out.
- I Shall Taunt You: In the most horrific ways possible. All through Nick's adulthoold and teenage years, Ivan tormented him with letters bragging about what he did and teases hundred of possible fates for Bjorn, even implying that he turned into a pedophile like himself.
- The Mentally Disturbed: Roland Claeren is shown to be completely delusional and believes he's being corrupted by the female hormone making him impotent, and believes that he can cure himself by forcing father's to rape their own sons in front of him.
- Would Hurt a Child: Doesn't even begin to describe The Troll's M.O. He forces the father's of young boys to rape them in front of him whilst he looks on and masturbates. There's also Ivan and Nancy, who helped to run a pedophile ring and molested dozens of young boys.
