Unsane is a 2018 thriller about a young woman who is forced against her will to stay at a mental institution where an ex-stalker currently still works.
Unsane follows a young woman named Sawyer Valentini (Claire Foy), who is on her way up for a big promotion at her job if she can avoid her creepy boss putting the moves on her. One night she brings a guy home for a one night stand and freaks out because she thinks she sees an ex-stalker named David Strine (Joshua Leonard) in her apartment. Next day, she goes and meets with a counselor to discuss her problems and while there she gets herself committed, forced to stay in a mental ward for seven days. To make matters worse, David has shown up at the ward and is part of the staff now, with only a few people, including her mother Angela (Amy Irving) and fellow patient Nate (Jay Pharoah) believing her. Will it be enough to get her out?
Everyone does mostly good work here with Foy – who has a big hit with the Netflix series The Crown –serviceable to good playing the wrongly-imprisoned hero. She is often convincing but nothing really stands out. Leonard, who is best known as one of the actors from The Blair Witch Project does well as the stalker turned psycho, but is also not much of a memorable character. Same thing goes for Irving, Juno Temple and the rest of the cast. They get you interested in finding out where the story leads but really nothing else neyond that. The real talent here is director Steven Soderbergh.
Soderbergh has taken chances for most of his career. He can work in any genre, from big budget blockbusters (Oceans Trilogy, Magic Mike) to smaller but well-received films such as Solaris and Sex, Lies and Videotape. This latest feature follows a trend where movies are shot strictly on digital, like Bubble, Full Frontal and The Girlfriend Experience with Unsane mainly filmed on iPhones. The result is actually surprisingly good. It has this weird ability to feel like some kind of messed up reality show and it makes the actors feel a bit more authentic. However, the story itself is just not as compelling as it wants to be. It’s the kind of thriller you could find on Lifetime with a cool 90’s TV filter.
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The trailers and ads are selling this off as a is-she-or-isn’t-she-crazy? flick, and it tries its best at first to put you in the same state of confusion that Sawyer is feeling, yet it never stays consistent. She has a few freak outs when she thinks she sees David and questions what is true or not. I even thought there might be another hospital staff member shise was confusing him with, but the resolution isn’t all that satisfying. If this movie was trying keep me confused, it mostly failed. It would have been nice if we were shown what Sawyer saw versus what actually was there more times than it did.
Unsane does have some good acting from its cast and if this was from a first time director, I might have rated this a bit higher. That this is from a very well-established, Oscar winning filmmaker, with movies like Erin Brockovich and Traffic makes a difference. I can’t imagine anyone else getting the same kind of love for this movie.