IT’S CRAZY SCARY GOOD
Movie made using only an iPhone is flawed, but still a nice thrill ride
Unsane is a bit of a bait and switch. It’s the second film from Steven Soderbergh since he supposedly quit the business in 2013. (Still waiting for him to team up with Daniel Day-Lewis, perhaps with the story of a guy who comes out of retirement for one last job.) It’s a grammatical non-sequitur — or should that be unsequitur?
And it’s neither the horror nor the is-she-or-isn’t-she that trailer and tagline suggest. If I also learn that Claire Foy made less than her male co-stars, I shall be very in happy.
Griping aside, Soderbergh has shot an effective and timely thriller, keeping production costs down by filming the whole thing on an iPhone (I love the idea that someone might have called him during an important take) and cutting labour costs by doubling as cinematographer and tripling as editor. And by paying Foy scale. (Kidding. I hope.)
The star of TV’s The Crown plays Sawyer Valentini, who has moved to a new city to rid herself of an ex-boyfriend who’s stalking her. Easily the most terrifying scene in the movie is when she meets with a stalker-avoidance expert (also an unexpected cameo) who presents her with a list of things to change about her life (i.e., everything) and a book called The Gift of Fear. I thought the title was a dark joke; turns out it’s an actual bestseller.
Sawyer then meets with a health-care professional and manages to have herself involuntarily committed to a psychiatric institution for observation. Calls to the police and her mother (Amy Irving) do nothing to get her released. A fellow patient named Nate suggests that the whole thing is an insurance scam, which is either just crazy enough to be true, or just true enough to be crazy. Nate is played by Jay Pharoah, marvellously unreadable in that way of comic actors in straight roles.
Things take a twist when Sawyer notices that the new orderly (Joshua Leonard), a guy named George, looks an awful lot like her ex, David. Again, crazy true or truly crazy? It’s a clever setup, but the movie errs in showing its cards too soon, thus letting some of the air out of the story. The guy is either David or George, and we learn definitively which too soon for my liking.
Not that the conclusion isn’t unnerving, even terrifying. Unsane is one of those movies that may leave you feeling a little off-kilter yourself afterward.
And Soderbergh makes great use of his stripped-down tool kit, placing his camera in unusual locations where only an iPhone could nestle, and cropping the whole thing into a weird aspect ratio that somehow heightens the sense of unreality.
Even better is his use of the mental hospital as the main setting. Once Sawyer is institutionalized, her world shrinks claustrophobically to a repeating pattern of common room/courtyard/ward/office. The occasional wide shot of the building suggests it’s surrounded by impenetrable woods. The script may not be perfect, but Soderbergh pulls all he can from it.
And Foy sells her character’s unsteady combination of anger and fragility. You’re never sure if she’s going to break, but you know that if it happens the shrapnel will be dangerous.