A fortuitous turning point in Spotlight begins with a close-up on a desk phone. The camera begins tracking out, revealing a team of Boston Globe reporters listening to the call, asking questions, and taking notes as the caller reveals details that dramatically widen the scope of their investigation. By the end of the scene, the group appears small within their basement office, the phone only a pinprick at the center of the screen.

This journey from close-up to wide shot exemplifies Spotlight’s depiction of investigative reporting. Based on a true story, the film follows four Boston Globe reporters (the “Spotlight” team) as they probe three decades’ worth of allegations that local Catholic priests have been sexually abusing children. Spotlight tracks their exposé as it gradually expands from whispers about one or two priests to something far larger in scale, and even institutionally concealed.

Though the Spotlight team won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002, Spotlight never glorifies their investigation. A dialogue-driven narrative with muted color palettes, it prioritizes concise storytelling over technical showboating—this is a film about journalists, after all. It may not be glamorous to watch Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) verbally spar with clerical courthouse staff to score some legal documents, but the urgency of the interaction makes it riveting. And despite the fact that Ruffalo is only one big name in a movie practically dripping with thespian cred—its roster also includes Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, and Stanley Tucci—Spotlight’s cast refrains from showy performances. Instead, keeping with the film’s tone, the cast members come together as an ensemble to serve the story.

By avoiding any self-importance, Spotlight escapes classification in the annual rush of Dialogue-Heavy Awards Bait. Director and co-writer Thomas McCarthy is best known for playing a pathological liar of a journalist on The Wire, so it’s logical that he deftly navigates institutional nuances. The reporters face editorial pressure to cut the investigation short, which would prevent them from conveying the full extent of the abuse, and a little hubris enters the mix when they worry the Boston Phoenix will publish first and possibly botch the story.

But journalistic concerns aside, Spotlight’s most affecting moments belong to the chilling verbal recollections of victims of abuse. Rather than a montage of flashbacks, we watch them struggle to clearly word their stories. The ultimate voicing of this repressed abuse lends Spotlight its haunting emotional impact as a study in the unseen and unsaid.