Unsane - review

Steven Soderbergh. The man seems to have retired more times than Deckard has retired replicants. He is Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part III. "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!"
However, if he continues to pull films like this and Logan Lucky out of the bag, then "Frankly me dear, I don't give a damn!".
Throughout his career Soderbergh has experimented with storytelling techniques through narrative and technology and Unsane is no different, being shot entirely on an iPhone 7.
He is not the first, Sean Baker made his debut feature Tangerine on an iPhone5, and he certainly won't be the last. Rather than limiting or handicapping production, Soderbergh uses it as a positive.
The handheld camera sets the scene from the first frame. Following Claire Foy's character Sawyer Valentini from a distance. Watching her from afar. Just like the stalker that has destroyed her life, and possibly her sanity.
Visiting a mental health facility to discuss her fears following a relapse, a few signatures later and Sawyer finds herself voluntarily committed for 24 hours.
*ALWAYS read the terms and conditions folks!*
24 hours turns into 7 days as she retaliates against her forced imprisonment. Not only that but she starts to see her stalker within the facility but what is real and what is in her head?
With Unsane, Soderbergh has actually made two horror films for the price of one.
The first is a horror, that seems scarily plausible, about being locked away in a mental asylum even though you are not insane, simply so the hospital can claim on your insurance. This is how the film begins, sort of like a cross between One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Girl, Interrupted. As Sawyer tries to convince people of her sanity, it only goes to antagonise the fellow patients and the staff into sedating her. On the inside she finds an ally in Nate (Jay Pharoah, impressing in a straight role with no Denzel Washington impressions to be found). He tells her about the hospital's scheme and advises her to keep her head down and do the time and she'll be out in a week when the insurance money run out.
Unfortunately, the stress of the situation causes Sawyer to start seeing things. Imagining that her stalker is working in the hospital and messing further with her deteriorating mental state.
The film then becomes a psychological horror as the Sawyer, and the audience, cannot be sure what is real and what isn't. One of the film's most shocking moments is the realisation that the stalker who is played with a placid, creepy calm by Joshua Leonard is Josh from The Blair Witch Project!
Claire Foy is electric in the role and completely convinces as a woman who is scared, vulnerable and perfectly walks the line where she could be sane or insane.
Other reviews have expressed surprise at her performance given her most famous role in The Crown and it is out of her comfort zone. Yet prior to The Crown, Foy had appeared as Lady Macbeth in a West End adaptation of the Scottish play opposite James McAvoy and she was superb as the conniving, crazy wife.
The plot takes some crazy, wild leaps in act 3, as if the film has stopped taking its meds, but leaves things suitably vague to allow for the seed of doubt to grow in the audience's mind as to whether or not to trust what they have seen.
What can be trusted however is Foy's committed performance that elevates this grimy, genre flick that looks and sounds so good that people will think YOU are mad to say it was shot on a phone!

3 stars