Soderbergh gives the thriller genre a dose of lunacy.
For some odd reason, it feels like forever since the world has seen a Soderbergh film. This is especially strange since its only been several months since Logan Lucky was released and fewer months since that film has become a beloved Soderbergh classic. The fact that the gap of time between the bonkers redneck farce and the newly-released Unsane seems so long is because each project bearing Soderbergh’s name cannot help but feel wildly different in relation to the one which came before. Every release from the director feels like a new and involving one-of-a-kind exercise in filmmaking and offbeat storytelling; a practice almost single-handedly pioneered by Soderbergh and which is more alive and well than ever in the psychological thriller Unsane.
Recovering from a prolonged bout with a stalker, analyst Sawyer (Claire Foy) finds herself in a new city with a new job and a strong intent on starting her life over. After realizing she cannot escape the mental horrors of her past, Sawyer seeks counseling only to find she’s accidentally signed herself into a mental hospital for observation. Once there she encounters a staff member named Ben (Joshua Leonard) who bears a striking resemblance to the man who terrorized her in the past. As the days go by, Sawyer must discover whether her tormentor has indeed found her or if she’s truly going crazy.
There are two main aspects which are instrumental in crafting the right kind of thriller. One aspect is the world in which said thriller takes place in; and the world in which Unsane is set greatly works in its favor. Not only is the hospital Sawyer finds herself trapped in badly-lit and somewhat dingy with shaky bulbs and dark corridors galore, but the setting of a mental hospital is, in and of itself, the perfect environment when it comes to imparting madness. For a character to be powerlessly trapped in the same space as her monster with plenty of help surrounding her, yet none of it truly within reach the way she needs it to be, gives off a sense of torture for the audience that is at the heart of the kind of film Unsane is. The other aspect greatly at work here is just how well a film such as this imparts its thrills onto the audience. This is trickier than one would think since by this point, every type of imaginable jump-scare has been well-utilized time and time again. Maybe it’s because of the hospital setting, the minimalist way Soderbergh chose to shoot his film, or the VERY real horror Sawyer finds herself facing (namely the questioning of her own sanity), but Unsane has plenty of nerve-shattering shocks that warrant audiences covering their eyes and squirming in their seats as the character’s fear becomes instantly and entirely felt.
As wildly eclectic as Soderbergh’s filmography has proven to be over the years, there’s no questioning from anyone familiar with his work that Unsane isn’t an offering by the man himself. The film has gotten some attention for its small budget (just over $1 million) and the director’s decision to shoot the whole feature on an iPhone camera. Technically, the result lies somewhere between 2002’s underrated Full Frontal (Soderbergh’s comment on the film world, which employed various types of lensing in order to show the different sides to the industry) and 2005’s Bubble where the director employed stripped away filming practices and a lack of movie stars in order to tell a story set in a doll factory. Yet from an ideological standpoint, Unsane closely resembles 2013’s Side Effects with its bold criticism on a powerful industry (although slightly more havey-handed here), a leading lady coping with a shaky mental state and number of periphery characters with questionable motives. But Unsane manages to emerge as its own unstoppable creation through the pulsating journey it takes its heroine on, her evolution rooted in defiance and especially in the way the film revels in the various elements that make the thriller genre so enthralling.
You couldn’t have dreamed of a better vehicle for Foy to sink her teeth into following her monumental success on The Crown. Sawyer is a prime role for an actress; a character seeped in darkness, anger and fear; and Foy is skilled enough in her craft to embody all those traits and more. While the rest of the cast must bow down to Unsane’s unstoppable leading lady, they each manage to populate the film with memorable side characters. Juno Temple is dynamite as a hostile fellow patient, while Jay Pharoah is inviting as an undercover reporter and Amy Irving is warm as Sawyer’s loving mother. Leonard meanwhile, makes for the perfect villain, straddling the line between good and bad for as long as the audience can stand it.
Currently, Soderbergh finds himself still in his creative prime as a director. While the aforementioned Logan Lucky continues to find its audience (all of whom were sadly absent when the film was first released), the director’s murder mystery series Mosaic scored both critically and commercially after first debuting as a phone app before being released as a linear miniseries on HBO. The move showed Soderbergh as a willing and eager experimenter who remains one of the masters at the forefront of innovative storytelling. Unsane is certainly following a tough act, and some may forget of its existence in years to come after arriving on the heels of a pair of such compelling projects. Yet it’s inclusion into the Soderbergh canon and its worthiness of the director’s continuously changing stamp will never be denied.
