Unsane (dir. Steven Soderbergh)

You might think that Steven Soderbergh’s psychological thriller UNSANE is the first of it’s kind to be shot entirely on a iPhone - well, in a sense it is; yet Sean Baker - who recently invested in the more traditional form of filmmaking with THE FLORIDA PROJECT - was the most recent director to adopt this film-making motif, with his Hollywood set sex-worker drama Tangerine back in 2015 - which was renowned for it’s sprawling Californian vistas, captured on a device no bigger than the palm of your hand.

Though there’s a difference here: while Baker used the limited restrains of the handheld cell phone camera to show the artifice and avarice of La La land, here, Soderbergh manages to find pathos and nuance by using it’s cramped visual aesthetic for a mental asylum set romp - with sensational turn from THE CROWN star Claire Foy - showing the claustrophobic tension within that type of filmmaking, and of a woman at her wits end fighting to prove that she isn’t, in fact, crazy.

There’s been plenty of female-led cinema of late which has used the current political climate surrounding the oppressed woman as an anchor to the plight of our downtrodden heroines. There’s suitably no change here: as our central damsel in distress is uptight businesswoman Sawyer Valentini (Claire Foy) - who was recently moved from her hometown of Boston - where her mother Angela (Amy Irving) awaits her calls - to greener pastures in Pennsylvania. Not for a job promotion or something much more positive i might add, but to avoid the overbearing advances of her stalker David (Joshua Leonard) - who’s beleaguered attempts at a relationship are becoming increasingly more troubling. Her social life includes the occasional tinder date and a evenings muling over his next attack. But thankfully she is a smart, taciturn young woman and she seeks out help: so she ventures over to Highland Creek psychiatric home, for some one-to-one counseling sessions to help her deal with her hallucinogenic visions of David. But although the conversation appears to be perfectly innocent - Sawyer has unwittingly committed herself to the psychiatric wing of the hospital - and unable to leave before the mandatory 24 hour probational period.

Perhaps the greatest part of watching films that take primarily inside a mental hospital are the colorful inhabitants, and their mischievous and borderline unpredictable behavior. With a snappy script from Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer, our jailbirds vary from tampon-throwing kook Violet (Juno Temple; has she ever played someone who isn’t crazy?), affable former opioid abuser Nate (brilliant SNL alum Jay Pharaoh) and a smorgasbord of unsympathetic nurse staff - more interested in strapping her to the table than listen to her wailing. Sawyer navigates the tricky terrain of trying to find rescue, whether it’s calling the cops to report her kidnapping or using Nate’s hidden cell-phone to alert her mother- yet to no avail, and the engaging melodramatic moments are pitched perfectly from our experienced director. Just before you think she’ll be heading for the exits, she’s unceremoniously ordered to serve an additional seven days: a punishment for her erratic moments of violence - right at the time her visions of David start to become more frequent and vivid.

Like all great psychological horror, there’s an abundance of fun to be had in guessing the meandering narrative flourishes. For the fist half of the drama, you wonder if Sawyer’s dramatic visions of her pursuer are all in her head, which is coupled with an ongoing nod to a corporate conspiracy concerning over-insured patients barred from leaving the hospital as it’s too profitable to the powers that be. It’s a interesting topic too boot, yet it all comes crashing down as soon as Sawyer notices that a fellow orderly is in fact David himself; has he meandered his way into the faculty in order to get close to her, or have her visions become so vivid now she can't tell the difference between a delusion and reality?

Interestingly, the man behind SEX,LIES AND VIDEOTAPES and more recently LOGAN LUCKY was yet to dabble his toes in the horror-genre until now, and though it admittedly takes it’s time before it will satisfy the gore-hungry contingent in the audience - when it does, there won’t be a disappointed head in the house. Even if the shaky hand-held cell phone camera which Soderbergh uses doesn’t work to his benefit during the films final third, where bodies pile up and throats are slashed, he still manages to create a atmospheric feeling of dread and a wonderfully provocative ending.

It’s far from the most original idea ever put on paper, and merely another entry in the well-worn horror canon of institutionalized shenanigans in the vein of THE WARD or GOTHIKA; though there’s an overwhelming sense of creativity surrounding Soderbergh’s latest, not least of which from it’s exploration into the realms of low-budget filmmaking, but also in it’s ability to flicker so effortlessly between the psychological escapades to the bravura nastiness in the final third.

Rating 4/5.