UNSANE (2018)

Studio:       Universal Pictures
Director:    Steven Soderbergh
Writer:       Jonathan Bernstein, James Greer
Producer:  Joseph Malloch
Stars:     Claire Foy, Joshua Leonard, Jay Pharoah, Juno Temple, Aimee Mullins, Amy Irving

Review Score:

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Summary:

Tormented by visions of a stalker from whom she fled, a troubled woman ends up trapped inside a secretive mental hospital.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Having fled from Boston to Pennsylvania to escape her stalker David Strine, Sawyer Valentini questions her mental stability when she continues to seemingly see David as well as picture other people with his face.

Sawyer discusses her psychosis with a counselor at Highland Creek Behavioral Center. The counselor has Sawyer fill out paperwork that Sawyer does not fully read. Sawyer ends up unknowingly committing herself to a 24-hour hold.

Sawyer uses her phone call to report being held against her will to 911. Two cops begrudgingly respond, but leave after cursorily verifying intake papers presented by the receptionist.

Sawyer meets fellow patients Nate Hoffman, Violet, and Jacob. Frustrated with her situation, Sawyer assaults Jacob as well as an orderly named Dennis. Orderlies sedate Sawyer and restrain her to a bed.

The following day, Sawyer meets Dr. Hawthorne. Hawthorne tells Sawyer that her admission of being a danger to herself and others requires that she remain under observation. For attacking Dennis and Jacob, Hawthorne extends Sawyer’s commitment period to seven days.

Nate privately tells Sawyer that Highland Creek is involved in a fraud scheme where they hold patients for extended periods so that insurance companies issue higher payments. Nate encourages Sawyer to simply wait out the week.

While receiving her daily medication, Sawyer has to be restrained once more when she sees David Strine posing as orderly George Shaw. Sawyer continues seeing David, although staff and other patients presume Sawyer’s psychosis is merely projecting her stalker onto an innocent orderly.

Following a fight with Violet, Dr. Hawthorne threatens Sawyer with solitary confinement in the basement. Sawyer professes that George Shaw is actually her stalker David Strine, but Hawthorne dismisses the claim and merely alters her medication.

David confirms his true identity to Sawyer when he flashes an envelope addressed to Sawyer’s mother Angela. The encounter causes an outburst that requires Sawyer to be restrained again.

Sawyer compels Nate to let her use the concealed cellphone that she saw him using previously. Sawyer calls her mother Angela and explains the entire situation.

Angela comes to Highland Creek demanding her daughter’s release. Dr. Hawthorne and hospital administrator Ashley Brighterhouse explain that they cannot release Sawyer, but allow Angela to see her. Following their visit, Angela vows to return with police and a lawyer to get Sawyer out. However, the cops and Angela’s lawyer later explain that there is nothing they can legally do.

Sawyer has a psychotic reaction when David secretly changes her medication. Nurse Boles warns David that they have to be more careful with the pharmaceuticals.

David poses as a maintenance man to gain access to Angela’s nearby hotel room. David kills Sawyer’s mother.

Sawyer tells Nate how she first met David when she worked at a hospice caring for David’s father. David became frighteningly obsessed with Sawyer and stalked her for two years.

Sawyer spits out the pills after her next encounter with David. Sawyer returns to her bed to find her mother’s ring under her pillow. Sawyer uses Nate’s phone to call her mother, but does not receive a response.

David becomes jealous when he observes Sawyer having another private conversation with Nate. David secretly captures Nate and tortures him in the hospital basement.

Sawyer has another fight with Violet. Sawyer also has another outburst when she finds Nate’s phone with a picture of Nate being tortured. Sawyer is sent to solitary confinement.

Nate is found dead. Nurse Boles tells David to keep quiet about the death.

David disables security cameras to visit Sawyer in isolation. Sawyer tells David she knows he killed Nate as well as her mother. David presents his plan for he and Sawyer to live together in his woodland cabin. Sawyer purposefully agitates David, which causes him to momentarily put his hands around her throat. David leaves the room in frustration.

An orderly discovers a damning notebook in the locker room that he brings to Ashley. Meanwhile, a jogger finds the real George Shaw’s body in the woods, which initiates a police investigation into Highland Creek.

David revisits Sawyer. Sawyer gets in David’s head by convincing him to have sex with Violet in front of her.

David forcibly brings Violet into the isolation room with Sawyer. Sawyer takes a homemade shiv that she knew was in Violet’s waistband and uses it to stab David. Sawyer flees the room. David recovers and snaps Violet’s neck.

Sawyer escapes the building, but David recaptures her. David drives toward his cabin in the woods with Angela’s body and Sawyer in his car’s trunk. Sawyer escapes the vehicle, but David briefly recaptures her in the forest. Sawyer eventually stabs David in the face and slits his throat.

A news story reveals that Nate was actually a reporter working undercover to expose corruption at Highland Creek. Cops execute a search warrant at the facility that ultimately leads to the administrator’s arrest.

Six Months Later – While having lunch with her co-worker Jill, Sawyer thinks she sees David sitting in the same diner. Sawyer prepares to kill the man until he turns to reveal someone else’s face. Sawyer drops her knife and hurriedly strides outside.

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Review:

Exchanging Boston for Pennsylvania put physical distance between Sawyer Valentini and her obsessive stalker David Strine.  The mental link intertwining the two remains as intimate as ever. Sawyer still sees David at work, on the street, even over the face of a one-night stand brought home for a fling.

Feeling vulnerable from her growing psychosis, Sawyer consults a mental health counselor at Highland Creek Behavioral Center.  The counselor takes notes, nods, and ends their introductory session by asking Sawyer to sign some supposedly cursory paperwork.  Having no time to flip through formalities, Sawyer treats the fine print like an iTunes user agreement and jots her John Hancock on the line.

Sawyer soon finds out she just committed herself to 24 hours of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” care.  Understandably upset at her situation, Sawyer violently lashes out at an orderly and inadvertently extends her stay to seven days.

Sawyer’s ongoing ordeal progresses from frying pan to fire to full-on inferno when a familiar face shows up in hospital scrubs.  Nurses assure Sawyer that the orderly administering her medication is George Shaw.  Sawyer insists her stalker David Strine has infiltrated their staff.  Naturally no one believes her.  Now Sawyer’s cracking sanity is locked in a mind game with the person she fears most, who outwardly appears to be David, but inwardly could be Sawyer herself.

“Unsane” takes a nifty nucleus for a psychological thriller and deliberately makes it decidedly less intriguing by giving it an unnecessary gimmick.  Cinema has existed so long as a medium, it demands fresh ideas for exploration.  But “Unsane’s” bizarre choice to be filmed entirely on an iPhone makes the experience feel exactly like what it is: an entitled experiment in pedestrian pointlessness.

You know those photographs featuring Spielberg or Scorsese holding a cannon-sized scope of precision-crafted Zeiss glass?  No one needs knowledge of camera mechanics to understand that a lens the size of a fingernail cannot produce the same professional-grade result.

Unsurprisingly, “Unsane” looks like any number of cheapo DTV indies since it is shot in essentially the same choppily rushed fashion.  Overexposed light blazes through windows that don’t have time for grips and gaffers to properly set screens.  Awful camera positions, such as simply sitting on a countertop bar, add an inconsistently applied reality TV veneer.  Fish eyes also distort imagery from being placed too close to objects.

“Unsane” doesn’t even compensate correctly for its TV-sized 1:33 aspect ratio. Talking heads appear dead center, surrounded by seas of empty space up above and to each side.

Nothing about the pocket-sized presentation enhances the film’s fiction.  In fact, it detracts.

While it would be low on the wish list of movie “what ifs,” I’d be curious to see “Unsane’s” story unfold without the distraction of a 4:3 frame and obtrusive score overcompensating to force quirk into a movie whose plot doesn’t deserve the pretension.  Claire Foy and Joshua Leonard, whose physically and psychologically fleshed performances carry everything captivating about the film, create complexities out of simply described character types.  The drama they drive strengthens suspense considerably, an achievement made more impressive given how hard the audience has to fight to see through filmic fog.

I certainly wouldn’t suggest that a director refrain from taking artistic risks. I’m just not convinced Steven Soderbergh isn’t approaching guerrilla filmmaking ironically.  Picture Anthony Bourdain smirkingly slinging a one-hour special on Dairy Queen hotdogs and you’ll have a similar image of what’s in play here.

“Unsane” gives off an aroma of Soderbergh “taking the piss,” to borrow a Commonwealth colloquialism.  Novices make bare bones movies off the cuff out of necessity.  When an accomplished auteur such as Soderbergh does it, yet retains the tone deafness to still shove in a Matt Damon cameo, the sense is his collaborators are only taking an amateurish route as a lark to see if they can, without asking whether the screenplay justifies if they should.

It seems sinful to award three stars to a Hollywood production in this case, as though “Unsane” gets away with careless contempt for cinematic conventions by disguising itself as a boldly inventive endeavor.  Conflictingly, it would be equally scandalous to deny “Unsane’s” ability to command an audience’s attention during its essential scenes. If Soderbergh had kept that string unbroken instead of padding with meandering moments like a cop conversing metaphorically about coffee, “Unsane” might not be a craftily compelling setup trapped inside a lazily implemented delivery device.

Review Score:  60

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