Unsane (2018)
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Unsane Movie Review
Unsane is a 2018 psychological thriller film directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Claire Foy. It is an okay film which has its moments, but is mostly bland.
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“I’m not crazy!“
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I’ve seen this type of film million times before where a woman is admitted into a mental institution against her will and we do not know whether or not she is crazy or if her hallucinations are real or not. So in terms of the originality, there is none whatsoever as the film is as bland and as familiar as they come.
Now I did like the first half of the film quite a bit, especially the second act. The mental institution scenes are really well done with some good dialogue and fine character moments. A couple of conversations are really memorable and the hopelessness and darkness of the situation I found were very well conveyed.
However, the movie was destroyed by its third act. The ending itself is fine, but the entire scene in the woods is overly violent and sensationalist, not to mention horror-like but in a non-scary, uninteresting manner. I just found the entire action scenes here unnecessary as the film was much better off as a thriller drama.
Unsane features forgettable characters with only the protagonist being even remotely memorable and well developed. The acting is also not particularly impressive with the exception of Claire Foy who really did give one rather solid performance. She was very good here, but I found it so funny that she looks so much like Emily Blunt. That really must hurt her career unfortunately as the resemblance is uncanny.
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The movie was directed by Steven Soderbergh who has never been my favorite director. His movies are usually not my cup of tea and I find him honestly rather overrated. So this flick is famous for being shot on an iPhone entirely as they did not use professional cameras at all. But I found that experiment in the end just done for lower cost purposes as the movie definitely felt that it was filmed on the phone. I could see it in many scenes which are shot form weird, unappealing angles. In that way he made a misfire and is much inferior to Sean Baker who used the phone amazingly in both ‘Tangerine’ and ‘The Florida Project’.
Unsane is very well acted by Claire Foy and I did like the first half quite a bit as it had some very strong scenes, but the third act ruined it for me as it was too bombastic and the overall story is familiar and bland. Soderbergh shot the entire film on an iPhone and, unlike Sean Baker’s works, I could definitely see that here as some angles look cheap, weird and unappealing.
