Unsane - 2018 film review

Unsane is an intriguing recent movie directed by Steven Soderbergh. It's a psychological thriller, but as you'd expect from Soderbergh, it's by no means conventional or obvious, even if the final section of the story is more routine than what precedes it. And quite apart from the well-made script, the film is of interest because it was filmed on an iPhone. Blimey, what next? I've read some reviews which quibble about the quality of the film because of the way it was filmed, but all I can say is that it didn't bother me. On the contrary, it rather reinforces my admiration for what Soderbergh has done.

The star of the film is the accomplished Claire Foy. Now she was born in Stockport, which I still think of as part of Cheshire, although it was long ago sucked into the amorphous mass that is "Greater Manchester". In the film, she is reasonably convincing as an American rejoicing in the name Sawyer Valentini. We soon realise that Sawyer is troubled, though we don't know why.

When she seeks help from an apparently sympathetic counsellor, her life begins a downward spiral. She signs a document without reading it and finds that she has voluntarily committed herself into the "care" of a mental hospital for 24 hours. Her attempt to get the police to rescue her fails, and she proceeds to make matters worse for herself by claiming that one of the attendants in the facility is actually a man who has been stalking her.

She's deluded, of course. Or is she? The story develops in a pleasing way, with several shifts that I found intriguing. The question of what will happen to Sawyer keeps us gripped, but along the way Soderbergh raises other issues, about health care and insurance in the US, and the extent to which people who don't fit into society are disbelieved when a more balanced view may be much more appropriate. Thought-provoking and definitely worth a watch.