What
happens when a paranoid invasion thriller comes out of the country that gave us
Ingmar Bergman and Lukas Moodysson? You can expect some serious angst. Alex,
an emotionally damaged electro-experimental musician, has enough neuroses for all
of Scandinavia. However, the mysterious crisis that befalls Sweden might just
be the catalyst that reconnects him with his estranged father and the great
love of his life in filmmaking collective Crazy Pictures’ The Unthinkable, which screens today during the 2019 Boston Underground Film Festival.
Alex
and Anna were once a thing, but he let his family strife and resulting mental
hang-ups undermine their pastoral teen romance. Years later, he is an arrogant
musician (specializing in distorted piano stylings), who is out of touch with most
of his old friends and family. Yet, he happens to cross paths with Anna again
just as strange things start going down—like explosions in transportation hubs,
drivers losing control of their cars, and planes falling out of the sky.
Everyone
automatically accepts Daesh’s statement taking credit for the explosions,
except Alex’s father Björn, who is good at connecting seemingly unrelated dots,
because he is a paranoid conspiracy loon. He has some ideas about who might be responsible.
Not to be spoilery, but they rhyme with Gagamir Spewton. Alas, the scruffy
nutter hasn’t been wrong yet, much to his chagrin.
Unthinkable is basically a
disaster melodrama that incorporates a handful of genre elements, but Crazy
Pictures deftly keeps raising the stakes and cranking up the tension (and the
family drama). Look hard enough and you can find elements of Red Dawn, X-Files, and Autumn Sonata. Frankly, Alex is more than
a bit of a pill, who quickly taxes our patience, but it is rather fascinating
to watch the older, wiser Björn suss out to the dastardly plot afoot.
There
are also some remarkably well-coordinated scenes of multiple car collisions and
plummeting helicopters, both in terms of special effects and stunt work. Unthinkable has stuff that can hang with
most of what you find in Roland Emmerich’s latest films. Alas, it also has
dreary old Alex.
If
you want to see moody and petulant, then brother, Christoffer Nordenrot
delivers it in spades as miserable Alex. On the other hand, Jesper Barkselius
shows tremendous range as Björn, running the gamut from cringy abusive parent
to remorseful alienated crank. Lisa Henni is also somewhat bland as Anna, but
they are Swedish after all, and big, earth-shaking spectacles are usually not
the most flattering actor’s showcases.
Perhaps
the scariest thing about Unthinkable is
how realistic it is, especially the closing coda, which clearly implies who is
most likely the responsible supper-villain. It certainly establishes how much
of a bummer Armageddon could be, yet it makes it all look tremendously
cinematic. Recommended for fans of apocalyptic cinema, The Unthinkable screens tonight (3/24), as the closing selection of
this year’s BUFF.
