A comedic review written for new satirical website themoviecritics.com

The Unthinkable: An Errant Scream and Linda Kulle

 The supposed stars of The Unthinkable make an undoubtedly valiant attempt to rule the screen, and they do not altogether fail. Indeed, the slow tread of this Swedish thriller is at once unremarkable and staggering in its rise and fall throughout the leading actors’ efforts. Yet, certain variances in the production allow Director Victor Danell to bring forth more memorable film than has emerged from Sweden in recent years.

Perhaps most notable among the more superficial stardom is Alex, played by Christopher Nordenrot. He opens the film with a dismal bowl cut, setting the darkest of tones for the remainder of the story. The choice functions effectively alongside his overall character development: Nordenrot’s dismal hair is cut short, signaling his maturation from boyish naiveté into adult naiveté. Later, he hones his musical talents and procures a goatee of sorts, though little else is involved in his story arch.*

 Another headliner is witnessed with Bjorn, played by Jesper Barkselius. He sets the stage as a slightly mad, yet apparently gifted, conspiracy theorist with an astonishingly adept affinity for crafting. Surely, the filmmakers meant to delve deeper into this man’s ability to construct and install a rotating chainsaw booby trap in as much time as a teenager’s five-minute craft TikTok; however, the fate of so many other films befell this one, and Bjorn’s manufacturing toils were cut mercilessly short from the finished product. His ingeniousness is not featured again.**

We will not speak much of Anna (Lisa Henni), who was done a great disservice by the filmmakers. They insisted that she, a human woman, portray a literal tennis ball on the screen. Bouncing between remembering the existence of her own offspring and disregarding various family members entirely; bounding betwixt utter uselessness and superhuman dexterity (we may never know how she managed to confront our aforementioned savant, Bjorn, who single-handedly defeated an elite Russian task force, and zip-tie him to a pole). Perhaps Henni’s brightest shining moment was early in the story, when she convincingly gazed upon Nordenrot’s initial hairstyle without a trace of laughter on her lips. True professionalism in the art of performance.
 

Now, we turn to the true stars of The Unthinkable, beginning with a stand-out performance by an unnamed actor screaming wildly in the forest. As Alex’s world begins crumbling and he stumbles about with nearly as much confusion as a man who just ran him off the road, we are privy to a bone-chilling shriek amidst the burgeoning rural chaos. The voice rings out clear and true through the woods, manipulated by either vocal aptitude or unparalleled post-production—either way, it is executed with a skill that seldom graces the silver screen.

The rise and fall of this scream give the audience their first true taste of fear. To this point, the narrative meandered along with clear direction but little momentum. The scream, however, marks the beginning of what is indeed unthinkable in this Swedish saga; it encompasses the imminent peril and point-blank deception brought upon rural residents by their own leaders and the world beyond their quaint borders. The scream rings out with unmatched veracity, carrying the film on its auditory back like an Atlas of sound, bound to bear the weight of an entire movie on extraordinarily capable shoulders.

Though the scream defines the film, our board cannot help but insist on one other performance in The Unthinkable with immeasurable significance in the film as a whole: the ultimately doomed solider Pettersson, portrayed by the skilled Linda Kulle.

Pettersson begins blissfully unaware of her fate, knowledgeably posing the perfect questions for an apocalypse, such as, “What is a horse?”—an inquiry suited to the bizarre nuances apparent at this point in the saga.

After a buoyant interrogation, Kulle steals the scene as Eva (Pia Halverson) reveals the decimation of other government officials. Kulle’s jaw clenches within the confines of her burly turtleneck, brilliantly offset by the curt ponytail that disguises what may otherwise have been a distractingly demure blonde bob. 

Shortly thereafter, Eva informs them of the Prime Minister’s death (it is itself impressive that she deduced this mortality while being tossed around a bridge in her car, observing a darlingly yellow clad policeman facing several confrontations with his own demise). Around the scene, brows furrow and heads bow, but Director Victor Danell and his editing team were wise enough to hold our focus on Kulle. Her chin juts forward, almost imperceptibly, with as much emotion behind her barely dropping jaw to stir even the most stoic of our critics.

The filmmakers were aware of Kulle’s imminent stardom, for better or for worse. They refused to allow her to overtake the other actors by condemning her character to a death that at once showcases Kulle’s acting abilities and the military’s complete buffoonery; Emil (Yngve Dahlberg) barely hesitates before he fires on his own colleagues, misses his mark by around nine feet, and lodges a bullet firmly in Pettersson’s stomach. 

She is a vision as she bleeds out, and the cast’s envy of her brilliance is profound as they largely ignore her death cries and deftly move on with their business. One imagines an alternate script in which Pettersson survives, rescues the rural multitude, and perhaps even pulls sweet Bjorn from his flaming cockpit (evidently Bjorn is also an extremely capable combat pilot; he is in fact herculean in all things, so long as there are no zip ties involved). 

Perhaps the forest-bound scream tells us more of Pettersson’s plight than anything else. It is melancholic and urgent, predestined to an inauspicious death, after which its sound will never be heard again. Trapped in the woods, calling not for help, but solely for some recognition of a fleeting existence—a favor not to be granted in The Unthinkable’s tragic narrative.

*Exemplified by his attempt to murder his own father and carelessly leave him to his death, followed later by watching his father apparently die in a plane crash without any attempts to aid him, but instead turns away with what could only be described as a barely contained shrug; followed immediately by the realization that his father has not yet died, as Alex watches him get out of the cockpit and then, at last, die an agonizingly slow death before his eyes.

**Later, uselessly, the audience is briefly informed that Bjorn once also built a guitar.