Insomnia (1999)

In the Arctic, in the summertime, the sun never sets. Hence Insomnia, the title of director Erik Skjoldbjaerg's deft debut. Skarsgard — the twitchy sweathog of Ronin, the frosty mathematician of Good Will Hunting — plays a crack investigator gone to north Norway to solve the murder of a 17-year-old schoolgirl who had a sneering cheat for a boyfriend and a crime novelist for a sugar daddy. For all his tough perfectionism, the cop is no match for the maddening light, and after he mistakenly shoots his partner, the cover-up of one killing converges with the uncovering of another. It would overstate the case to call Skjoldbjaerg a humanist Hitchcock, but only by a little: He's made a thriller tense with tingly fear and obsessed with every sense of the word guilt. A-