Unidentified

In Unidentified, women are good, women are bad, and women are everything in between. In a society where a woman’s death can easily go unnoticed, this film makes sure the audience pays attention.

Unidentified ranks among a rare class of movies that forces viewers to re-interpret everything they’ve just seen once the full picture locks into place. Whether that makes everything that came before worthless or worth it may be less a reaction to al-Mansour’s filmmaking and more of a reflection of the audience’s own subject position.

While decently absorbing, Unidentified eventually goes way more Hollywood than either of those films, with a plot that defies logic (raising issues of both structure and perspective) and undermines the movie’s message — unless the pulpy swerve is itself intended as a kind of statement.

Unidentified uses the familiar framework of a murder mystery to tell a deeply political story about autonomy, visibility, and the high cost of speaking up. Even when the plot stumbles, the message never does.

While Unidentified almost works as a serviceable pilot for a crime-of-the-week script — think Law & Order: Riyadh — the rug-pull of an ending eliminates even that slimly entertaining possibility.

It’s the rare movie whose every artistic intention can be easily identified, but whose emotional effects are never discovered.

Even the third-act pivot, which pushes Unidentified further into campy, confused daytime TV territory, can’t rouse an audience nodding off after a stakeless, thrill-free whodunnit. But it does help undermine whatever social message al-Mansour might’ve offered about the way women live and die in modern Saudi Arabia, without even tapping into the joyous tastelessness of some of its peers.