This is probably going to be a shorter review than usual. Not because Unidentified, the new film from Wadjda director Haifaa al-Mansour, is not worthy of discussion— it is, I think— but because of something that happens in its final few minutes. Unidentified is a mystery, and its final twist is the sort of doozie which reframes everything that came before it. This twist is the most notable aspect of Unidentified, and will almost certainly be what I think about when I recall the movie in the days and years to come. It is also, needless to say, the sort of twist I am utterly verboten to write about in a contemporaneous review. So what’s a critic to do?

For the purposes of this review, I’m going to do my best to critique the twist without actually discussing the details— to write around the twist, if you will. If you’d like to go in completely unspoiled and don’t trust yourself not to connect the dots, feel free to dip out now. For the rest of you, I’ll do my best to remain vague.

What I can tell you is that Mila Al Zahrani plays Nawal, an office worker at the Riyadh Police Department. Nawal is a true crime buff, voraciously watching podcasts on her phone (in the funniest touch in an otherwise serious film, her favorite is hosted by a makeup influencer, casually applying lip gloss and rouge while detailing gruesome murders). Sensing that her ambitions lie above and beyond the office scanner, Nawal’s boss invites her to a crime scene: a young Jane Doe lying in the dunes, the evident victim of both a hit-and-run and a cover up. With no clues to her identity, the higher-ups intend to bury the victim in a potter’s field, but Nawal takes it upon herself to investigate the murder and find closure for this anonymous girl.

For the majority of its running time, Unidentified plays like a fairly conventional potboiler, albeit one with a more interesting than usual setting and social milieu. Much of the drama comes from Saudi Arabia’s harsh expectations toward women. That her bosses dismiss the crime as an “honor killing” only makes Nawal dig into her investigation harder, furtively interviewing teenagers who might have known the girl but are discouraged by their school or families against speaking up. As the mystery unfolds, we begin to sense the world in which this young woman lived, and the sad circumstances surrounding her death.

Then there’s that ending. When presented with this sort of twist, one’s first instinct is to mentally play the film back and gauge whether or not it works on a narrative level (I even considered watching the film a second time before writing this review, but time got away from me). To be honest, I’m not sure this one does. Even taking into account lies by omission (including at least one key element hidden just out of frame), the twist raises questions about characters’ motivations which defy easy answer; knowing what I now know about them, I’m hard pressed to explain why they would do some of the things they do. Worse, the information we receive in the film’s final moments threatens to undercut the gravity of the story which precedes it. A good twist pulls the rug out from under the viewer; this one comes dangerously close to pulling the rug out from under itself.

However, there is another metric against which a twist can be judged. There’s more to a film, after all, than simple plot mechanics; principal to the moviegoing experience is how a movie makes you feel. On this pure, lizard-brain level, the ending of Unidentified delivers the undeniable thrill of the utterly unexpected. al-Mansour’s direction, previously muted and restrained, suddenly goes for broke. It’s such a bonkers, left-field moment that it’s difficult not to get caught up in it, even as your brain struggles to make it make sense. In other words, it’s cinema.

In the end, Unidentified is a somewhat frustrating film from the director of a modern world-cinema classic, stuck in a gray area between deeply serious issues-drama and giddy, gleeful pulp. Yet there is a life to it which is undeniable, and it’s bound to spark endless discussions spilling out into the lobby. Perhaps Nawal’s favorite podcaster holds the key to understanding the film after all: it makes you squirm at the brutality, while also alluring you with immaculate pop.

Unidentified
2025
dir. Haifaa al-Mansour
99 min.

Opens Friday, 6/19 @ Capitol Theatre