The film`s title refers not only to the un-recovered bodies at ground zero, but also to the state of the nation at large. Set in the hallucinatory period of time between September 11 and Halloween of 2001, The Unrecovered examines the effect of terror on the average mind, the way a state of heightened anxiety and/or alertness can cause the average person to make the sort of imaginative connections that are normally made only by artists and conspiracy theorists-both of whom figure prominently in this film. The Unrecovered explores the way in which irony, empathy, and paranoia relate to one another in the wake of 9/11.