Special Unit – The First Murder (2026) Movie Drinking Game
Take a Drink: for smoke
Take a Drink: for dead bodies
Take a Drink: when a member of the team surprises with their skills
Take a Drink: for that damn fish soup
Do a Shot: for missing faces
Do a Shot: for tea allegories
By: Henry J. Fromage (Two Beers) –
Slickly produced murder mysteries based on true crimes will never go out of style, and Denmark delivers an eye-catching one here.
Special Unit – The First Murder is pretty much about what it says it’s about- the first murder investigation by Denmark’s Special Unit- their equivalent to the FBI, after an arson investigation in the 1920s becomes a multiple murder one.
A Toast
Director Christoffer Boe delivers a striking beginning promising mystery and the cold touch of death. He’s got a developed stylistic eye and creates an atmosphere of dread and decay that matches the particulars of his sufficiently twisty mystery with information doled out deliberately and a properly ominous score overhanging it all. His dream/hallucination sequences are gnarly indeed.
For those missing David Fincher’s Mindhunter (as I very much am), in particular its visual style and focus on a mismatched group of investigators creating a respected law enforcement agency out of whole cloth, this will help scratch that itch as much as anything probably can, at least.
Beer Two
This feels perhaps too familiar at times- from the Eyes Wide Shut party, to the motivations behind the crime that are telegraphed early on, well most of them, anyway- there’s some additional nastiness on offer in the end. All told, the story can’t quite hold up to the promise of the aesthetics, more fine than standing out.
Verdict
Special Unit – The First Murder is a dark and stylish murder mystery set in a place and time you likely haven’t such a story told in.
