Whether it’s the hero pilot in “Sully” or the journalists in “Spotlight” – it can be incredibly satisfying in the cinema just to watch people continue to do their jobs in a highly professional manner, even in exceptional situations. The German-Austrian thriller “Unsafe” is the exact opposite of this: Pretty much every single decision made by the firefighter duo who are called in to rescue a six-year-old girl from a safe in the basement of a remote country house without cell phone reception is somewhere between highly unprofessional and downright stupid.
This no longer has anything to do with the tongue-in-cheek “Don’t go upstairs alone” horror meme, but in this concentrated form it actually has what it takes to throw the entire film off track. This is by no means the only problem that makes the new thriller from “Kidnapping Stella” and “Prey” director Thomas Sieben a frustrating rather than nerve-wracking and exciting viewing experience.
Six-year-old Laura only has about 40 minutes left of air – so it’s high time to use every escape room technique imaginable.
This starts with the usual trauma cliché, which has to serve as the protagonist’s only character motivation without any variation: firefighter Alex Birk (Jeanne Goursaud) was unable to save a little girl in a major fire – and as a result started drinking. Her colleague and lover Jakob Gotthardt (Laurence Rupp) is therefore skeptical when they are called to an operation that involves, of all things, freeing a child. Especially since the thing sounded comparatively harmless on the phone: all they talked about was a girl locked in the basement.
However, a completely different picture emerges on site: The father, Mark Krüger (Anton Noori), leads the firefighters downstairs, where there is a historic safe from the 1930s – his daughter Laura accidentally locked herself in it while playing hide-and-seek, and because the safe was left behind by the recently deceased previous owner of the house, no one has the combination. A call to the locksmith René Rademeyer (Christoph F. Krutzler) reveals that the massive steel box with its four number wheels is almost impossible to crack – and because it is hermetically sealed, there should be enough air to breathe for a maximum of three quarters of an hour. A breathless fight for the survival of the six-year-old begins…
There’s always time for a little chat
At least those involved don’t seem to take the “breathless” thing too seriously – because despite the lack of time due to the lack of breathing space, everyone is just dawdling around here. When Alex just wants to get something out of the car quickly, he just has a quick chat with the mysterious neighbor Thomas Schott (August Schmölzer). In any case, it feels like there is more discussion about whether the father and his wife Rebecca (Alexandra Maria Lara), who later got horny from work, should be allowed to stay in the basement with them, rather than actually worrying about opening the safe.
Alex and Jakob simply have zero authority – and while in the thriller genre one is happy to swallow a contrived premise, the characters then have to start behaving at least somewhat believably in the situation presented. It doesn’t help that the actors recite their dialogues so obediently into the camera, as if they weren’t taking part in a movie, but in an evening crime thriller. You almost wish that “Unsafe” would head towards the stupidest of all twists and resolve the whole thing as Alex’s trauma therapy dream – that would be anything but satisfactory, but it would at least explain in retrospect why everyone here behaves so strangely.
She may not be a police officer, but firefighter Alex (Jeanne Goursaud) also knows how to defend herself if the worst comes to the worst.
The twists presented instead aren’t bad at all – even if you shouldn’t think too hard about whether the behavior of the characters up to this point really fits in with their true intentions. Even if you haven’t paid close attention in between, you won’t have a problem: After the final reveal, everything is actually crystal clear, but the plot is still neatly unraveled with flashbacks. After all, Netflix co-financed the film – and with streaming productions, the plot has to be repeated every few minutes because hardly anyone is paying attention throughout.
Conclusion: The premise makes you want to watch it and the twists are okay too. But the characters’ unbelievable behavior and the actors’ wooden reciting of lines nip any emerging tension in the bud.
(Spoiler) PS: After the whole film was about the lack of mobile reception, in the final scene Alex is standing just a few meters from the house and talking on her cell phone as if it were the most normal thing in the world. But when it comes to credibility, it doesn’t matter anyway.