The Unknown – Det okanda. (2000)

Directed by: Michael Hjorth | 91 minutes | horror | Actors: Jacob Ericksson, Marcus Palm, Ann-Sofie Rase, Ingar Sigvardsdotter, Tomas Tivemark

This 2000 Swedish horror film eagerly borrows from ‘The Blair Witch Project’, released a year earlier, by using hand-held cameras and flashlights in a wooded area. At the same time, dashes of ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ and ‘The Thing’ are mixed in, resulting in an interesting, but unoriginal film. Exciting is ‘The Unknown’ (in Swedish ‘Det Ökanda’) though. If you like atmospheric horror, this is definitely the place to be.

The film was made without a lot of budget and although you can see that, director Hjorth knows how to make a lot of it. An example of his creativity and talent, although there are some disturbing mistakes here and there. Especially the shaking camera is sometimes quite annoying. It sometimes seems as if one of the cast members is holding the camera, leaving six people in the woods. The same goes for sometimes impossible lighting from more flashlights than there could reasonably be. This sometimes takes you as a viewer out of the film and that is a shame, because the tension really does not have to be broken in this way.

The actors all do a great job: their reactions to things that happen are horribly good. In particular, a moment in which one of the characters complains of a sore throat and someone else wants to take a look to see if the throat is sometimes red, is blood curdling. By showing as little as possible (apart from a gruesome “autopsy” scene on the life form that the group finds) the tension is greatly increased. No doubt due to the limited budget, Hjorth relies heavily on his actors to portray the horror and that is used optimally here.

As a ‘gimmick’, the actors all use their real first names. Ingar Sigvardsdotter as Ingar in particular plays excellent and the desperation and fear she portrays when things go really wrong in going in is very believable. The isolated setting in the forests of the far north adds an extra touch to the horror. It’s a shame that towards the end the film collapses a bit and comes with a denouement that has already been shown a hundred times before, so that it becomes a slightly disappointing climax.