“The Bunker” is a terrifying true-crime documentary about a shocking kidnapping, told in an unusual and disturbing way. Its three episodes arrive on Thursdays, on YPlay, and depict not only a grotesque crime but also a made-for-TV treatment.
Isabel Eriksson was working as an escort in Stockholm in 2015 when a client drugged her, kidnapped her and locked her and her small dog in a vast bunker. She survived the ordeal and tells the story here in her own words, brave and vivid. The opening chyron tells us, “Since the abduction, Isabel hasn’t processed her trauma,” and the episode includes scenes of her talking with a trauma therapist. The therapist also says that Erickson is withdrawn in front of the camera.
But the strangest thing about “The Bunker” is that they recreated the bunker, and Erickson sees it as a healing exercise. The simulacrum is accompanied by a lot of footage of the actual bunker, and the blurring of real and recreation here is interesting and disturbing. The story feels ripped from a Scandinavian thriller, and the documentary toys with that tainted familiarity, using a fake set to recreate a real scenario that’s a ton based on real misery. Reminds me of a fairy tale.
Most of the scenes here are filmed in shades of blue, and even the therapy sessions take place in a dim, wood-paneled basement, with a corner couch and a glass brick window at the top of the wall. are held. “The Bunker” also plays long stretches of audio recordings of the kidnapper’s confessions to the police, which uncomfortably doubles as a guide for would-be monsters.
Everything here will sound like a revolting cliché… except it’s true. “It’s a shame,” says one neighbor, that she didn’t get to know the kidnapper better — “I would have tried to make him a really good guy,” she laughs. “But that’s what happens.” She thinks Erickson is “somewhat” wrong, though she doesn’t elaborate.
“The Bunker” is about the marketing of suffering, about trauma as commodity, about (apparently) survivor-led voyeurism, about its paradoxical angle on therapy as entertainment— Or perhaps it raises difficult questions about healing as performance. Or perhaps on performance as healing.