With such a diverse filmography, I’m surprised it only took this long for director Steven Soderbergh to tackle the horror genre. With films ranging from crime dramas to heists, it’s fair to say that Soderbergh can now add horror-thriller to his skill set, thanks to an exceptional horror debut in “Unsane.”
Eccentric, Hard-headed businesswoman Sawyer Valentini (Claire Foy) visits a therapist one day after constantly having an encounter with a man who is continuously following her. When she signs some extra forms for a support group, she soon finds out that she has unwillingly become a patient at a mental institution. Trapped against her will and losing her sanity in the process, she must come to understand what is reality and attempt to fight her way out of the institution while also having to confront the overwhelming visions of her stalker as the begin to affect her psyche.
You know you have an incredibly talented director when he’s capable of directing and shooting an effective horror-thriller with an iPhone. Soderbergh utilizes the characteristics and technical aspects of the iPhone in order to create a claustrophobic, enclosed environment in order to further enhance the discomfort and anxiety of the audience. With the use of panning shots, close-ups, and tracking shots, Soderbergh makes the film feel intimate and that much closer to our own reality, effectively drawing the audience into the world he had constructed.
The addition of a mental institution as the primary setting of the film further enhances the insanity and ludicrous-nature of the overall narrative. For the majority of the film, the boundary that separates reality and your own insanity seems almost nonexistent. She becomes a sort of unreliable narrator, forcing the audience to rely on her testimony and her visions, restricting their senses and thus their awareness of the environment.
However, it does get less interesting as the film progresses because that ambiguity slowly dissipates and it becomes fairly evident whether she’s truly insane or not, with the final act becoming very reminiscent of a film from the Lifetime Channel. It removes much of what made the film interesting and exceptional. The film is further hindered because of the ending, which I thought was a bit of a cop out and felt rather unsatisfying.
But the film still manages to get across the messages and themes it’s trying to tell, whether it’s all in Valentini’s head or not. The story alone is enough to stay with you well after the film ends. The idea of your freedom and humanity stripped away from you with a simple pen and paper is horrifying, and it’s made worse when no one around you will listen to you or even bother to care.
The tension is made more effective with the fantastically exceptional performance given by Claire Foy. Foy embraces the insanity the character goes through, effectively showing us the scars of her past while also exemplifying her tenacity and willingness to survive. In one moment she will be panicking for her life and in another she will maintain a tough, level-headed stature. When she does have visions of her stalker, Joshua Leonard sells us on the pure intimidating and unsettling nature of the stalker, giving us a wonderfully disturbing villain.
Overall, “Unsane” is an impressive feat that grants entry for Steven Soderbergh into the horror genre. With a really ambiguous, complicated situation masquerading as a straightforward horror-thriller, Soderbergh utilizes the techniques of claustrophobia, stress, and anxiety to provide the audience with an engagingly pleasant experience, even though he doesn’t always get neither the tone nor the ambiguity entirely across. But it still shows us you can do more with an iPhone than just texting, Instagram, and Twitter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy5QHGMxIi4&t=1s&w=585