Unsane

photo courtesy of pophorror.com

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

     Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s 11, Magic Mike, Logan Lucky) experiments with psychological horror in his claustrophobic new film, Unsane. The movie stars Claire Foy as Sawyer Valentini, a woman wrongfully committed to a hellish psychiatric ward. As Sawyer waits for her release, she learns that her violent stalker (Joshua Leonard) has become an attendant at the hospital. Such an unlikely story makes Sawyer’s cries for help all the more unbelievable… unless, of course, she really is insane.

     Unsane makes for an enjoyable and vaguely disconcerting viewing experience. I’m always a fan when a horror movie goes for more than just jump scares, and although Unsane does have a couple of those, it takes a much more mature approach: its scariness comes from a broader unsettling feeling that infuses the whole film. On one hand, you have the immediate danger of Sawyer’s stalker, David Strine, but then you also have the overarching hospital corruption that threatens to keep Sawyer under lock and key indefinitely. Those two forces in conjunction make Unsane a stimulating mixture of horror movie approaches, somewhere between Stephen King’s Misery and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

photo courtesy of variety.com

     In keeping with the movie’s close-quarters feel, the camera spends most of the runtime staying by Sawyer’s side as she wanders around the mental hospital. There are only a few scenes that exclude her. Claire Foy, who most people will know as Queen Elizabeth from Netflix’s The Crown, does an admirable job maintaining that focus; in her hands, Sawyer is a worthy—if never exactly likeable—protagonist. The movie allows her an unusual amount of character development for a horror flick, including some nice scenes in which she’s able to very frankly confront her demons. That being said, Unsane isn’t above using horror movie clichés, even when it comes to character: Sawyer can be perceptive and cunning when it’s time for her to get out of the fix, despite the fact that she didn’t display much intelligence as she got into it.

photo courtesy of indiewire.com

     As for Soderbergh’s contribution from the director’s chair, there’s been quite a bit of buzz around the fact that Unsane was shot on an iPhone. The choice feels more like a gimmick than anything else, but Soderbergh does produce a distinctive visual sensibility for the film, using harsh, confrontational angles that wouldn’t feel totally out of place in a mockumentary. They make the action feel uncomfortable, tense, paranoid. I don’t know that Soderbergh achieves anything exceptionally groundbreaking, but his direction lends Unsane a crucial degree of anxiety.

     FINAL VERDICT: As its title suggests, Unsane is a strange experience, but for those who can stomach its dark atmospherics, it should be a thrilling one.

Watch the trailer here. 

photo courtesy of ew.com