The Unthinkable

This is a bit of a mixed genre film, part romance, part action thriller, and both parts are done well, and work ok togethor. But there is a feeling if it had picked one or the other, and gone for it, the result might have been better. The acting is good, the set piece action is well done, but the script is a bit all over the place. Intriguing, and worth a watch, but it doesn't completely work.

This movie has left me speechles,and I have discussed it for whole day. It is two movies in one:catastrophy movie and family drama. Both are perfectly scripted,and each one adds to other.

The gloomy atmosphere of being attacked by unknown force is probably close what people felt during events such as Chernobyl or WTC attacks. It reminds me of Russian TV series Outpost I have watched recently.

Another aspect of a movie us a family drama. Every character is right,and yet,they can not get together in the most simplest form. And after some tragic events,who is to blame? What if I did this,or that...the questions echo until the very end.

To me,this is a masterpiece worth watching and discovering its subleties one by one.

The Unthinkable (Den blomsterdid nu kommer) is a low-budget, Swedish action/disaster film following the character Alex and his estranged father Björn who are forced to reconnect when the country falls under attack from an unknown entity.

This is really not the film the poster or the brief synopsis on Prime make it out to be but I guess they market it that way to try and entice more viewers. I'd advise that you do not go into this film expecting a typical action or disaster film as it's anything but.

For the most part, the film is really well shot and manages to generate a very atmospheric and moody tone complete with a great ambient score. The action set-pieces that do exist in the film are executed well and the effects are very good especially considering the budget the filmmakers had to work with.

As a side effect of the low budget and alluded to above, the film focusses mostly on the behaviour and reactions of the people caught up in the middle of all the confusion as opposed to the action itself - we mostly hear about things rather than witness them ourselves. It's a very human and personalised approach to the disaster genre, much like films like Cloverfield or Godzilla (2014).

The pace only really starts to pick up around the halfway mark and the first half of the film is so painfully slow that it will likely turn away impatient viewers or those who were expecting something different.

Really, this film could do with being about twenty minutes shorter (probably taken out of the first hour) to help with the pacing but the second half of the film and especially the ending is excellent.

I absolutely loved the first part of the movie, it was captivating and beautiful. An interesting mix of genres. Had it continued the same way I would have rated it a 10. Unfortunately the last part is not so great. Still worth a watch in my opinion.

I went into the cinema expecting a movie about the diplomatic crisis, the problems which would occur when you're faced with a chaotic attack of this sort. Unfortunately, I got a bit more of a romance story than what I wanted. I am not saying it's a bad thing, for the movie itself is well made and planned, but just different from what I expected. The movie is intense and has for sure what I'd say is a typical Swedish movie with a lot of repressed emotions and anxiety, which reaches out to the viewer.

Whilst the movie in itself is good, there are several times where I find myself annoyed upon subtle "plotholes". As I am involved in the Swedish military, there were several times where I sat frustrated, knowing that several things the soldiers did in the movie would not occur in the same way in real life.

Overall, the movie was good. Despite it not being my type of movie, I won't let that alter my judgement, thus I set an eight.