“I’m detonating what I’d normally do”
Director Steven Soderbergh goes back to his low-budget roots with secret iphoneshot horror Unsane
As retirees go, steven soderbergh is busier than ever. Last year saw the critically acclaimed heist caper Logan Lucky. Next up: a thriller entitled Unsane, with The Crown’s Claire Foy, shot entirely in secret, and on iphones.
Now the secret’s out, the director is still keeping at least a few cards close to his chest, understandably unwilling to give too many plot details. “it’s a cautionary tale about reading the fine print,” he says, cryptically. Collider reported it as a horror movie. is that an accurate descriptor? “if you’re a woman, it’s a horror movie,” he retorts.
What we do know is Foy is playing the lead, a “young woman who finds herself committed to a facility by surprise”, and it’s fair to say, quite unlike Her Majesty Queen elizabeth ii. “she’s playing a rather unstable American woman,” explains soderbergh, “who’s on the back end of a traumatic emotional experience, and has moved to a new city to try to rebuild her life. i think people will be both surprised and impressed with her transformation and the extreme contrast [from The Crown].”
For all concerned, Unsane is a remarkably small production. Having started his career as an indie darling with the micro-budgeted hit Sex, Lies, And Videotape, soderbergh says he has been looking for decades to make something in this territory. the ascendant quality in smartphone cameras made it happen. “if i’d have had this technology when i was 15, i’d have a very different career! You’ve really got to ask yourself the question: how much more [quality] do i need?”
Audiences shouldn’t notice any difference in image fidelity, soderbergh insists (“it’s a 4K capture!”, he marvels nerdily). it was never meant as a headline-grabbing gimmick; filming on smartphones simply allowed for a quicker, scrappier turnaround. Unsane went from script to completion in a little over ten months, with a shoot of just over two weeks — all of which served the film’s psychological thriller sensibilities well.
“that’s exactly what the film needed,” argues soderbergh. “it’s designed to be a very visceral, in-your-grill experience, and i felt i needed to embrace the italian side of my genetic make-up, and dispense with the swedish side.” in preparation, he watched a number of low-budget indie horrors, including roman Polanski’s Repulsion and Alice Lowe’s 2016 pregnancy-slasher Prevenge. “i was looking at things that i felt were somewhat in our neighbourhood, in terms of story or production approach,” he says. “i was interested to see how they were solving their problems.”
the whole process, he admits, was liberating. “Part of the fun was to be able to literally do things on set i would never do. that was the fun of it. i would never put a lens that close to anybody! to be able to just go, ‘Fuck that’. i’m detonating any idea of what i would normally do.” Don’t expect him to start drawing a pension any time soon.
Unsane is in cinemas from 23 march