Film Review: Unsane (2018)
Steven Soderbergh is back with psychological thriller Unsane, which he shot, edited and directed. The film stars Claire Foy as protagonist Sawyer who has just moved to a new city to avoid a stalker when she gets admitted to a mental hospital against her will following what seems to be a fairly routine counseling appointment. As things go on we as the audience question, as Sawyer does herself, whether she is indeed insane, or whether this is all a big mix-up.
I thought the first half of the film was brilliant, having worked in a mental hospital myself I've always found it fascinating how once you're in there the most normal things are often seen as a sign of mental illness, and while to me it seems normal to resort to screaming and aggressive behaviour when kept in such a contained environment for extended periods of time, this was often taken as a sign that they should be there. Early on the film tackles this issue and seems to be a statement about mental hospitals admitting people purely to get an insurance payout (something a US chain is being investigated for right now). Sawyer seems sound of mind when she is admitted, but as time goes on struggles more and more with the reality of her situation, leading to violent acts and behaviour that you would never have expected from her outside.
Just when I thought the film was really going to have something interesting to say on these topics, it changed into something else. Something which I thought was less compelling and a little farfetched, although still fairly well executed. I won't spoil it here, but let's just say it turns into something more conventional.
The film is well shot, there's a real sense of claustrophobia in the mental hospital and a lot of the tension in the film is brilliantly created through this, something that is well complemented by an unsettling soundtrack and a superb performance from Foy. One scene in particular conveys a certain feeling brilliantly using some psychedelic filters. The fact it's shot on an iPhone is impressive but doesn't seem to add anything to the film, and it's not as if Soderbergh needed to do it for budgetary reasons (unlike fellow iPhone film Tangerine) so it's slightly odd that he chose to do it here. I suppose you could say it gives the film a more hyper-real feel, but I feel like too big a deal has been made out of it. It feels like a gimmick more than anything.
Overall, it hits the target when it comes to being unsettling and gripping but misses it in terms of saying anything particularly interesting, despite some early promise.