“The Bunker” is an unnerving true-crime documentary about an astonishing kidnapping, told in an unusual and unsettling way. Its three episodes arrive Thursday, on Viaplay, and depict not just a bizarre crime but also a made-for-TV therapeutic approach.
Isabel Eriksson was working as an escort in Stockholm in 2015 when a client drugged her, kidnapped her and locked her and her little dog in an elaborate bunker. She survived this ordeal and tells the story in her own words here, brave and lucid. The opening chyron tells us, “Since the kidnapping, Isabel has not processed her trauma,” and the episodes include scenes of her talking with a trauma therapist. That therapist also says that Eriksson is holding back in front of the camera.
But the weirdest part about “The Bunker” is that they rebuilt the bunker, and Eriksson visits it as a healing exercise. This simulacrum is depicted alongside a lot of footage of the actual bunker, and the blurring of real and recreation here is both intriguing and disquieting. The story feels ripped from a lurid Scandinavian thriller, and the documentary toys with this tainted familiarity, using a fake set to recreate a real scenario that is reminiscent of a ton of fiction that is based on real depravity.
Most of the scenes here are filmed in blue-tinted shadows, and even the therapy sessions are held in a dim, basement-y space with wood paneling, a corner couch and a glass-brick window at the tippy-top of the wall. “The Bunker” also plays long sections of audio recordings of the kidnapper’s confessions to the police, which double uncomfortably as a how-to guide for aspiring monsters.
Everything here would feel like a revolting cliché … except that it’s true. “It’s a shame,” one neighbor says, that she didn’t get to know the kidnapper better — “I would have tried to turn him into a really nice man,” she sighs, chuckling. “But that’s how it goes.” She thinks Eriksson is “somewhat” at fault, though she does not elaborate.
“The Bunker” raises tricky questions about the marketing of suffering, about trauma as commodity, about (seemingly) survivor-led voyeurism, about its contrived angle on therapy as entertainment — or maybe on healing as performance. Or maybe on performance as healing.
