Film Review: Unsane

I think the biggest surprise about Steven Soderbergh’s new film, Unsane, to me, is just how devilishly funny it is. Don’t get me wrong, as a story about a woman questioning her sanity as she is placed in an environment where she can’t trust anyone and vice versa, while it seems like her stalker somehow has her exactly where he wants her to be (or is it all in her mind?), it is as terrifying and as unsettling as you’d expect. But in between the moments of horror, and even sometimes during, there will always be something about the way it’s edited, the way the star, Claire Foy, performs a scene, or how a supporting character will react to something, that will just make you laugh. It’s an uncomfortable laugh for sure, but one purposely designed to be that way.

Steven Soderbergh has claimed multiple times that he will retire from directing, but he always seems to come back, and it’s fairly obvious why. He has way too much fun doing this. Unsane is Soderbergh at his most playful as a filmmaker in a long time, and this is only seven months after he released one of 2017’s gems, Logan Lucky. This is a very different film from Logan Lucky, obviously, not just in terms of genre, but in terms of craft. A big deal has been made about how he shot this film on an iPhone, which has been done before plenty of times before with films like And Uneasy Lies the Mind, 9 Rides, and the most prolific one to date, Tangerine. He is simply using the tool that he thinks is best for the story, and with the way he creates a voyeuristic, claustrophobic, and gritty feel through the iPhone (and whatever lenses, postproduction color correction, etc. he used), he was able to tell this story in an incredibly effective way.
Another big part of why this works as well as it does is Claire Foy as Sawyer Valentini. She has a very commanding screen presence, and is able to get a lot across through looks, glances, and body language. She’s vulnerable when she needs to be, manipulative when she needs to be, charming when she needs to be, unlikeable when she needs to be, so on and so forth. It’s clear that Foy and Soderbergh were always on the same page and were totally game for whatever the film required. It makes a film that can be both unbearably distressing and effortlessly watchable and engaging.

While it is Claire Foy’s film, she is also surrounded by a solid supporting cast. Jay Pharoah makes the biggest impression as Nate, a fellow patient at the clinic who ends up being the one person Sawyer is able to talk to. Joshua Leonard plays the stalker, David, and his scenes with Foy are spectacular in how how they’re able to bounce off each other, most notably during moments of confrontation.

The film that came to mind when I was watching this was Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island. Both films are very unabashed B-movie homages that leans on a lot of familiar tropes, but are made with a great attention to craft and their apply own nuances and commentary within the story. The difference being Shutter Island having a grand scope and almost operatic feel, while Unsane is a bit scrappy and closer to something like a grindhouse film. The film even ends on a freeze frame and a slow zoom in, which put the biggest smile on my face.

Unsane certainly takes a setup and story that you’ve seen before to some capacity, but what Soderbergh and his cast and crew do is breathe some life into it. By keeping the scope as intimate and personal as possible, it puts the audience in the mind of a person experiencing something very horrific, and the tools used to create that effect were very well utilized. I had a great time with this one, and it’s the kind of film that would work wonders in a packed theater. I’d be hard pressed to find another film this year that can match their technical inventiveness with equally as smart storytelling, but I’d like to see them try.