Unsane – first look review

On pro­mo­tion­al duties for his 2017 come­back fea­ture Logan Lucky, direc­tor Steven Soder­bergh proved slip­pery when it came to even acknowl­edg­ing the exis­tence of this new fea­ture, a film shot over 10 days in June of that year. Head­lines already abound dub­bing Unsane his iPhone movie; the shrink­ing of high def­i­n­i­tion cap­ture devices saw it shot and cut in the time it took Spiel­berg to fin­ish the Wash­ing­ton Post crossword.

More excit­ing than any news of Unsane’s less-than-con­ven­tion­al tech­ni­cal toolk­it is that it is the filmmaker’s first ven­ture into the realm of psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror. The film’s trail­er sells it as the claus­tro­pho­bic prog­e­ny of Samuel Fuller’s 1963 psych ward bomb­shell, Shock Cor­ri­dor, and Roman Polanski’s 1965 clas­sic of female oppres­sion, Repul­sion. That’s basi­cal­ly the con­ceit, even if Unsane can’t bear the weight of comparison.

In the broad­est sense, it’s a famil­iar nar­ra­tive, and one that ought to serve as an oppor­tu­ni­ty for styl­is­tic attack. It sees Claire Foy’s depressed office drone acci­den­tal­ly sec­tion­ing her­self in a sleepy pri­vate hos­pi­tal. This is the result of intense trau­ma she has suf­fered at the hands of a stalk­er. We all know the tune – we’re here for the vir­tu­osic solos, espe­cial­ly with Soder­bergh at the helm.

Yet for all the fleet­ness of foot the light­weight cam­era affords, very lit­tle trans­lates into visu­al show­man­ship. Soder­bergh has always had a keen eye for off-kil­ter fram­ing, and Unsane takes a cer­tain wired ener­gy from its skewed per­spec­tives. One killer scene sees reverse-angle body­cams lay­ered up in dur­ing one of Sawyer’s freak outs, but it’s a peak that arrives too early.

The film’s prob­lems begin and end with its screen­play, cour­tesy of Jonathan Bern­stein and James Greer. Things begin inter­est­ing­ly enough, with seeds sown for an exam­i­na­tion of the trau­mat­ic effects of male vio­lence and intru­sive insin­u­a­tion. Sawyer receives much unwant­ed atten­tion: her boss awk­ward­ly hits on her; a male inmate on her inex­plic­a­bly mixed ward cops a feel; a men­tal facil­i­ty recep­tion­ist suf­fers the innu­en­dos of an atten­dant cop. ​“Where’s the out­rage?” asks Sawyer of her doc­tor. Well, quite. Pulling at these the­mat­ic threads only serves to see them unravel.

Not that it would mat­ter so much if the genre mechan­ics were on point, but even here Bern­stein and Greer come unstuck. The set-up wants us to ask, ​“Is Sawyer sane? Insane? Unsane?” A mid-film reveal crip­pling­ly set­tles that ques­tion. Fair enough, if we can now move on to the busi­ness of esca­la­tion. The writ­ing duo’s propen­si­ty for what Lar­ry David might call a ​‘stop ​‘n’ chat’ under­mines Soderbergh’s chances of crank­ing the nar­ra­tive up a gear. By the time Sawyer mounts her fight back, any ambi­gu­i­ty of char­ac­ter or sub­text is well and tru­ly shot, and Soderbergh’s for­mal ambi­tion duly flounders.

If it’s not all bad news, it’s most­ly down to a whol­ly and con­vinc­ing­ly com­mit­ted Foy. Soder­bergh has some fun when a movie star pal turns up in a brief cameo to explain the logis­tics of stalk­er pro­tec­tion­ism, advis­ing Sawyer to keep off of social media. ​“Think of your cell phone as your ene­my,” gets a laugh, but you can decide for your­self who the joke’s on.