Lily McGuire (Leslie Ann Warren) is a young artist who works as a metal sculptor. Her latest brainstorm is a combination interactive piece and mechanical sculpture that people can go into and confess their inner most thoughts and deeds. To start gathering data she puts up flyers advertising a phone number that people can call as a confessional. She calls it “Apology” and plans on using the recordings as part of the exhibit as well as allowing patrons to leave their own confessions inside the structure. Lily is divorced and has a daughter, Anna (Skye Bassett), of whom she has visiting rights.
Lily is contacted by a reporter, Roy Burnette (Chris Noth) about her project. He asks her about the confessions she has been getting and if any of them are interesting. She tells him that she got a call from someone who claimed to have killed a gay person, and he left a name. Roy’s attention perks up. He tells her that there have been five homicides in the last six weeks of gay men. Roy wants the name of the man who called and he wants to work with Lily to find the man so he can write about it. Lily panics and runs away.
Roy publishes his story anyway and finds himself the target of the serial killer. Police detective Rad Hungate (Peter Weller) and his partner, Frank (George Loros) are assigned to the gay murders. Rad begins talking to Lily trying to find out the name of the serial killer. At first she is hesitant; however, when the killer, who calls himself Claude (Jimmie Ray Weeks), kills Roy and begins leaving more messages on Lily’s answering machine, she begins working with Rad to try to identify who Claude is.
When Claude finds out that the creator of Apology is a woman, he begins stalking her. Lily shuts down the phone line which enrages Claude, putting her and her daughter in danger. Claude kills a homeless man that lives in front of Lily’s apartment building and pins a note to the body demanding that Lily turn the phone line back on or he will punish Lily by taking away something she loves.
“Apology” was released in 1986 and was directed by Robert Bierman. It is an American and Canadian thriller. The movie is a made for television movie created for HBO. The film was based on the novel “Mr. Apology” by Campbell Black which itself was based on a real life event.
The basis of the film concerns an actual confession telephone line created by conceptual artist Allan Bridge in New York City. Feeling guilty for his own deeds of shoplifting to make ends meet he created the phone line and put fliers up telling people that they could confess their crimes anonymously. The line ran from 1980 to 1995. The line ended after Bridge’s sudden death in a scuba diving accident. Bridge sold the rights to the story to Campbell Black, who created the novel. In 2022 the Apology Line was revived as was a six part podcast done by Bridge’s widow, Marissa.
The movie got some mixed reviews, but I liked it. It’s haunting and suspenseful. The acting was good, the atmosphere was dark and noir-ish, and the story decent. The rapport between the two main characters was believable. The tension lasted all the way to the end.