Det okända

Dogma-esque horror flick. Five biologists camped out to examine the site of burned down forest discover early an odd, unidentifiable but immediately and mysteriously disgusting "thing." Though the ending's too pat, as if somebody's seen too many b/w "Outer Limits," color video, real actors, lots of daylight, and just enough relationship horror expertly mixed with the horror film horror make this much scarier than "Blair Witch." Note also that, though all the action takes place in the open, in the somewhat desert-like burned out forest, the story's claustrophobic. No journeys, no premature attempts to trek out. It's all pretty much right there where it starts. You end up knowing the place, and dreading it, nearly as well as the characters do. Didn't hit me until just now, but Hirokazu Kore-eda's "Distance" has a structure similar to both this film and the much inferior "Blair Witch." "The Unknown" and "Distance" both resemble the surreally claustrophobic "The Exterminating Angel.

Five geologists go out to a forest, where a quite big area has burned down, to investigate the reasons for this happening. They find a species that has never been seen before and soon, one of the geologists starts to behave strangely. Does this creature has anything to do with the fire and with the accidents that occur?

I can't really say that I had high expectations on this hybrid of "The Blair Which Project" (1999) and "Body Snatchers" (1993), but I have to admit, that it wasn't bad at all. The acting and the directing is fair, not sensational, but still good. The script is cleverer than I could ever have imagined from this movie: there are surprisingly many one-liners and some sequences are exciting and even kind of scary in its best bits. The only thing that drags the rating down a bit is the shaky camera work, similar to the one in "The Blair Which Project". I honestly felt sick after half an hour, not to mention how I felt afterwards. Otherwise, an overall good movie, but don't forget to bring a bag with you - simply in case of emergency. Rating: 6/10

This low-budget film is quite good, I must say. It smells Blair witch long way, but still it contains some new cool and different things. The actors is totally OK, and the dialog is sometimes really funny and way above average! This film is not so scary, Blair witch is far more frightening, but still it is very watchable. A big plus for director Michael Hjort!

The mark: 3 out of 5.

It's bad enough to see a film that's so totally derivative of a film like "The Blair Witch Project" (which I found a yawn, anyway), but to then add insult to injury by adding the key premise of "Alien", to the plot, is not only absolutely ludicrous, but an insult to viewers. Through directors like Ingmar Bergman, Sweden has produced world-class cinema. This film, "The Unknown", has set the Swedish Film Industry back decades.

This movie is in the same mould as Blair Witch Project, but this time with five Swedish people to encounter strange happenings. The director manage to create realism into the characters, how would you react? The film manage to lift itself up from mediocrity, it is so easy to compare with similar movies and discard this, but it has something going for it. I would say it is fairly well made (even though it is a low-low budget movie, filmed in only 7 days) and will give credit to the makers of this film to take the chance on this project. I watched it and found it entertaining.