The Unknown (2000)

directed by Michael Hjorth

Sweden

90 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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I've been wanting to see this one for a while now and it did not disappoint. At first I wanted to say something about how it felt so dissimilar to other typical Swedish horror films I've seen, but I didn't want to dismiss the whole of Swedish horror cinema like that... until I saw some Swedish people talking about how this is atypical for Swedish horror. It's more the time period than the place, though, at least to me- the whole of Scandinavia in the early 2000s had a fairly specific aesthetic to their horror films which I believe can be best described as "cell phone commercial", and a lot of them tended to not really even be horror movies as much as they were action-thriller hybrids that usually had a human villain. This is the background I want to draw up for The Unknown just so I can contrast it against the things that were coming out alongside it at the time.

The first thing this movie does is make you believe it's found-footage. I guess "make you believe" is kind of strong language considering that at no point does it make any actual claim to being found-footage, nor do any of the characters wield a camcorder at any time. But the way it's filmed is virtually identical to Blair Witch Project, and it took me a few minutes to realize that none of the characters were acknowledging the camera nor were any of them designated to film everyone. I've written before about how certain found-footage films- the ones that are more adept- fully utilize the camera as a separate character, even if it's actively being carried by one of the protagonists, in order to create a representation of the antagonist's gaze. The Unknown is an excellent example of that. There's no reason for the camera to be used in this almost cinéma vérité style, but it makes us feel like the perspective is of an outside observer. Maybe it's just me, but in films that use this technique, I start to ascribe feelings to the camera's "person". I imagine it leering at the characters, enjoying their struggle. When it zooms on their anguished faces I imagine that it's getting some pleasure out of torturing them. Especially in a film like this where the horror is, by definition, unknown, having the point of view belong to the thing the protagonists are being threatened by while all the while they're unaware that something is watching them fits in with the narrative and makes a creepier film.

The reason why this is so unlike the films I've mentioned previously as being what I think of when I think of Swedish horror is because the horror of it is so loose and undefined. The film begins when a group of field biologists arrive at a patch of burned forest to investigate what caused the fire, and kicks off when they find the remains of a creature none of them can identify. Even after having watched the movie it's hard to say exactly what happened- it's like The Thing with less lore, a purposeless bodily invasion where, because the point of view is not that of one of the humans in the group, the exact intent of the invader and the way it works is left to the imagination. It's one of those movies where the land itself is just wrong. It slips into the bodies of the humans who visit it and creates imitations of them or forms them according to its own needs.

There's one line in this that's sticking with me- when most of the characters have been transformed by the unknown force, and one of the last remaining humans is speaking to the things that used to be her friends, one of them tells her "You have such beautiful hands". In a film where most of the dialogue is utilitarian, no flourishes, just sentences that real people would say to each other in real life, a small touch like that goes a very long way towards establishing an unsettling atmosphere. It implies that hands are a novelty to whatever entity or entities ripped through that burnt-out forest, that they're fascinated with human anatomy because it's not theirs. I know that it leans pretty hard on the legacy of Blair Witch, but The Unknown is such a creepy film all on its own that it's well worth checking out if you, like me, enjoy horror where the horror is unquantifiable and mysterious.