What: Unsane
Where: At a cinema near you
Who: A scary film about a professional young who might or might not be a little crazy
When: Unsane can now be seen in the UK
Why: It’s a scary movie all the way through, even including the unraveling at the end
Is Sawyer Valentini a bit crazy and imagining things or is it all in her head?
Claire Foy (The Crown) plays Valentini, a young successful career woman who had an issue with a stalker years ago. But it’s all behind her now. She’s focused on her career (though her creepy boss offers to take her out of town on a business trip), and just basically getting on with her life.
She goes to see a mental health counselor for a checkup but soon enough, strangely, she is committed against her will in a mental hospital, locked up with people who are all certifiably crazy, so surely why is she locked up with them when of course she is not crazy. She gets a hold of her mother who tries to get her out, but to no avail. Could this be a scam the hospital is involved in just to get her insurance money? But then Valentini recognizes one of the staff who was, or perhaps wasn’t, her stalker. ‘Unsane’ takes us through Valentini’s nightmare experience in the mental hospital and her quest to escape the unjustice, and possibly the stalker, that she is currently facing.
Director Steven Soderbergh in 2013 announced that he was retiring from filmmaking, but ‘Unsane’ marks his second go since then as director (last year’s successful ‘Logan Lucky’ was his ‘return’). ‘Unsane,’ which was shot on an iphone (just like the huge hit ’Tangerine’) is a strange choice for Soderbergh, as he made many successful and award-winning films early on in his career. While ‘Unsane’ won’t be winning any awards, and as the second half spirals a bit out of control relegating it to ‘B’ movie status, it’s still a scary pyschological thriller that will leave you on the edge of your sit with a nail-biting performance by Foy.
Review by Tim Baros
Photo courtesy of Fox