Unsane

Year: 2018
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Claire Foy, Joshua Leonard, Jay Pharoah, Juno Temple, Amy Irving


Plot: A young woman recovering from emotional trauma caused by being stalked, unknowingly gets herself involuntarily checked into a mental hospital. Things get worse when her stalker shows up at the hospital under a new name, working as an orderly.


Review: Unsane is another experimental film by Steven Soderbergh, in this case he filmed the entire movie using an iPhone 7. Because of that, the picture quality does suffer a little as there is a lack of wide exterior shots and the picture seems grainy at times. Honestly the film looks a few notches up from a found footage movie, but at the same time it lends a claustrophobic feel to the tense storyline.

Sawyer Valentini (Claire Foy) is a young woman who still suffers from emotional stress after being stalked for the last two years by David Strine (Joshua Leonard). She meets a counselor at a mental hospital for a session, but unwittingly signs documents that allows them to check her in against her will. She tries to get herself out, but fails. And then David appears in the hospital as an orderly, compounding the trouble she is now in. So what is happening exactly? Is she really crazy, or a victim in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Thankfully, Soderbergh doesn't pull one of those "is it all in her mind only" kind of situations and establishes promptly what Sawyer and the audience are up against at the end of the first half. There is of course a reasonable explanation as to how she winds up in this situation, but I won't spoil it for you. Needless to say, we can totally relate to Sawyer as someone who has been screwed and desperately needs to escape, but it's impossible when nearly everyone thinks she's crazy.

However, Soderbergh unwisely sets aside the "trapped in a mental hospital" plot and pushes forward the stalker plot in the third act, thereby switching Unsane from a psychological horror thriller to a Misery style horror flick. The last part of the film has a heavy Misery feel to it, right down to the final scene. Not that the stalker plot is a bad thing, but clearly the plot Soderbergh had went with for the first two thirds of the film was stronger.

There are also a few plotholes present, like how David is able to control so many variables at the hospital without any of the other staff knowing, or how the doctors and staff don't even bother to actually treat Sawyer with other methods besides giving her drugs.

On the plus side, Claire Foy turns in a solid performance as Sawyer, perfectly showing fear and paranoia of being caught in a horrible situation. Joshua Leonard (from The Blair Witch Project) is suitably creepy as David the stalker. Amy Irving (from Carrie) also shines as Sawyer's mum who tries to get her daughter out, and also worth mentioning is Jay Pharoah as Nate, a fellow patient who assists Sawyer.

To sum it up, Unsane is a solid horror thriller that deserves checking out, despite a weak third act. (7/10)