You know that feeling you get when one of your favorite artists does something brilliant all by himself? I just got that.
That's Steven Soderbergh and his newest flick, the horror-thriller Unsane. In content, it's nothing groundbreaking or revelatory. Sawyer (Claire Foy), a strong-minded but troubled young woman, is disturbed as she keeps seeing her old stalker, though she has moved and started a new life. After seeking professional help, she unwittingly commits herself to a mental hospital, wherein her cries for help are seen as symptoms of her illness. Continued visions of her stalker force her to come to grips with herself and with reality, facing her demons and her past while trying to escape the horrors around her.
The difference with this movie is all in the craft. It's got a streamlined screenplay (and it clocks in just over 90 minutes) that sharply focuses everything; there's not a moment to spare. Soderbergh, in addition to directing, also photographed and edited the whole thing, so you know it's exactly his vision we're watching. He shot it all with an iPhone 7 Plus, which makes the experience jarring and nervy. Definitely do not watch this movie if you have severe anxiety. Nothing is calm in its delivery.
At first I figured a feature film shot with a smartphone would be gimmicky. Unsane isn't at all. In fact, if anything, it grounds the bizarre story and brings it to a much more immediate, gritty vividness than any other approach I can think of. It's also deeply psychological, as phones represent, in many ways these days, our lifelines. It's a phone Sawyer uses to try dating, to reconnect with her distant mother; it's her one phone call she relies on for help in the hospital, and it's another inmate's phone that plays a significant role in saving her. To shoot the film on a phone is technically savvy, but it's also thematically savvy.
The film, for all its sparkling wit, is one of the darkest pictures I've seen in a while. Knowingly bleak, it assaults the conventions of filmmaking while also firing volleys at our understanding of mental health, the institutions of mental medicine, and our cultural sexism when it comes to disbelieving women. No one believes Sawyer, a successful businesswoman, doesn't belong in the hospital. No one believes her that her violence is actually self-defense from other inmates. None of the men believe that she doesn't want to have sex with them. No one (except her mother, significantly) believes her when she says her old stalker has infiltrated the hospital and is posing as one of the attendants. And, I have to confess and challenge you, often during the film we also question her reality: Is she crazy? Is she seeing her stalker where he simply isn't? Maybe this is some hardcore gaslighting, maybe it's some Shutter Island shit, maybe it's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It's really hard to say during the first half.
But by the second half, the film rallies behind Sawyer as she manipulates events and people in her quest for freedom. She is brave and smart in her escape attempts, even when people are being tortured and murdered all around her. The film also lampoons the medical institution in a particularly brilliant sequence of events that I won't spoil here. It was what, for me, elevated the film from "good" to "great".
I'll support any film as topical as this -- mental illness, sexual harassment -- that is also steadfastly true to its own purpose and aesthetic. Leave it to Soderbergh to be awesome.
But seriously, don't watch this movie if you get anxiety about things like mental illness and sexual harassment. I was feeling ill walking out, just because of the content, and I don't have bad anxiety.
IMDb: Unsane
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