Review: Unsane
Reportedly shot in just over a week using an iPhone 7 Plus in 4K, Steven Soderbergh's Unsane is an effective potboiler that blends the B-movie pulp of Samuel Fuller with the psychological lurchings of Sixties-era Roman Polanski. It also serves as a showcase for Claire Foy, bridging the gap between her breakthrough role as young Queen Elizabeth II on the Netflix series The Crown and her upcoming turn as Lisbeth Salander in The Girl in the Spider's Web.
The film begins with a voiceover of a man rhapsodising about his beloved, but it's clear from the accompanying image of darkened woods that what is about to unfold is no love story. The beloved in question is Sawyer Valentini (Foy), a businesswoman traumatised by her experience with a man named David (Joshua Leonard), who became obsessed with her after she, volunteering at a hospice, spent time caring for his ailing father. She's trying to rebuild her life but, after a Tinder date goes terribly awry, she decides to seek some counselling during her lunch break.
She talks of how changing her email, phone and the time of her lunch hour has become part of her daily existence, how taking out restraining orders, relocating to a new city, and always second-guessing is her new normal. "Rationally, I know my neuroses are colluding with my imagination to manifest my worst fears," she confides to the counsellor and further shares that she never feels safe and that, yes, she has had suicidal thoughts in the past. After the session, Sawyer is called upon to sign some forms - strictly routine, she's told - but then she soon realises that, by signing the forms, she has "voluntarily" checked herself into the facility for 24 hours. Those 24 hours turn in one whole week when she has physically agitated encounters not only with the patients, particularly Juno Temple's tampon-throwing Violet, but with members of the staff, one of whom she believes to be her stalker David now presenting himself as a mild-mannered orderly named George.
Yet is George really David? Or is Sawyer losing her grip on reality? Unsane teases both possibilities before firmly committing the more predictable option. Tipping its hand arguably too early in the game also further exposes the film's numerous plot holes and lapses in logic. Despite this, Unsane proves itself a solid genre film, partly because Soderbergh (also serving as cinematographer and editor under the respective aliases of Peter Andrews and Mary Ann Bernard) is too considered a filmmaker to make something truly schlocky, but mostly because of Foy's fearlessly and committedly abrasive portrayal.
Unsane
Directed by: Steven Sodebergh
Written by: Jonathan Bernstein, James Greer
Starring: Claire Foy, Joshua Leonard, Jay Pharaoh, Juno Temple, Aimee Mullins, Amy Irving
