Léa Seydoux’s ‘The Unknown’ Looks Like the Next ‘Under the Skin’
Directed by Arthur Harari, the Oscar-winning co-writer of Anatomy of a Fall, the French-language film follows a photographer whose life is upended after a mysterious encounter.
A stranger. A wild night. A body that suddenly isn’t yours. That is the unsettling premise behind The Unknown, a new psychological sci-fi thriller starring Léa Seydoux and Niels Schneider – first teaser from Neon has arrived, and the bizarre footage is already drawing comparisons to Scarlett Johansson’s cult sci-fi film Under the Skin.
But Neon’s The Unknown seems to take the existential body-swap concept in a much stranger direction.
Directed by Arthur Harari, the Oscar-winning co-writer of Anatomy of a Fall, the French-language film follows a photographer whose life is upended after a mysterious encounter.
‘The Unknown’ Trailer Reveals a Terrifying Body Swap
The story centers on David Zimmerman, a 40-year-old Parisian photographer played by Niels Schneider.
During an assignment, David encounters a mysterious young woman named Eva, portrayed by Léa Seydoux. Their encounter takes a surreal turn after David follows her to a drug-fueled party.
The next morning, everything has changed.
David wakes up inside Eva’s body.
The teaser deliberately refuses to explain exactly how the transformation happens. Instead, it throws viewers into an increasingly disorienting world where identity, reality, and physical existence begin to blur.
Léa Seydoux also appears opposite herself in the footage, adding another layer to the film’s deliberately unsettling visual language.
Rather than presenting the body swap as a conventional science-fiction gimmick, The Unknown appears far more interested in what happens when a person is forced to experience existence from an entirely different physical identity.
Why Fans of ‘Under the Skin’ Should Pay Attention
The comparisons to Scarlett Johansson’s 2013 sci-fi cult classic Under the Skin are understandable.
Jonathan Glazer’s film famously cast Johansson as an alien inhabiting a human body, using science fiction to explore isolation, desire, identity, and what it means to be human.
The Unknown appears to approach similar territory from a different direction.
Both films focus heavily on alienation and existential uncertainty, while using changes in physical identity to challenge the characters’ understanding of themselves and the world around them.
However, The Unknown is not simply another version of Under the Skin. Its body-swap premise and the mystery surrounding Eva suggest a more psychological, surreal approach.
For viewers who loved Johansson’s haunting performance, The Unknown could be the next bizarre sci-fi experience worth watching.
Arthur Harari Brings an Oscar-Winning Background
Arthur Harari co-wrote Anatomy of a Fall, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and now returns with a much more surreal project.
Arthur Harari, his brother Lucas Harari, and Vincent Poymiro developed the screenplay for The Unknown, based on the graphic novel The Case of David Zimmerman, created by the Harari brothers.
The filmmakers expanded the source material into a feature that explores larger questions about identity and existence rather than following a straightforward genre formula.
That ambition is already reflected in the early critical response.
Critics Are Calling It Unnerving and Spellbinding
The Unknown premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival in May and has received a mixed but generally intriguing early response.
The film currently has a 68% positive Rotten Tomatoes score based on 28 reviews, according to the supplied early ratings.
Some critics have praised its willingness to descend into increasingly strange psychological territory, while others have found its deliberately abstract approach less satisfying.
One early review described the movie as an unnerving journey into the void, while The Hollywood Reporter praised it as a psychological puzzle powered by Seydoux’s performance.
With a reported runtime of 139 minutes, this is clearly not being positioned as a quick, conventional thriller.
‘The Unknown’ Release Date
Neon has not announced a firm U.S. theatrical release date yet. The movie is currently listed as coming soon, with a late-2026 or early-2027 theatrical release expected.
The film stars Léa Seydoux, Niels Schneider, Valérie Dréville and Lilith Grasmug.
If the teaser is any indication, The Unknown is preparing to take audiences somewhere deeply uncomfortable. And with Seydoux at its center, the film could become one of the year’s strangest psychological sci-fi discoveries.
For anyone still thinking about Under the Skin years after seeing it, this may be the next film to make you question exactly who or what you are looking at.
