Film: Unsane

By Tom Browne

Steven Soderbergh’s latest thriller sacrifices depth for surface thrills, but Claire Foy is never less than excellent.

If the recent retirement of Daniel Day Lewis prompted much wailing and gnashing of teeth (most of it from me, admittedly), one might also speculate on how much duller the movie landscape would be without Steven Soderbergh. The Oscar-winning director of Traffic first announced his withdrawal from the scene in 2013, only to bounce back last year with the heist comedy Logan Lucky. If that seemed like an eccentric (albeit entertaining) project for which to come out of retirement, then Unsane offers few extra clues as to his current motivation.

Admittedly, Soberbergh has always gone his own way. The auteur stylings evident in his debut Sex, Lies, and Videotape are ever-present, whether in mainstream fare such as Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich and the Ocean’s Trilogy, or more experimental doodlings like The Girlfriend Experience, Bubble and the truly bizarre Schizopolis. At first glance, Unsane seems firmly in the latter camp, establishing a glitchy, disjointed style very early on, as if the movie has been pieced together using digital surveillance footage (pretty appropriate, given the subject matter).

Sawyer Valentini (Claire Foy) is a bored and put-upon junior businesswoman, perpetually fielding calls from dissatisfied customers and fending off the attentions of her priapic boss (their sole scene together is a decidedly #MeToo moment). Solitary lunches on park benches and awkward Skype calls to her over-protective mother all indicate a woman barely keeping it on the rails, a feeling confirmed when an abortive Tinder date triggers memories of a stalker who forced Sawyer to flee her home town.

This prompts a visit to a local psychiatric hospital, where she pours out her troubles. So far, so conventional. But things take a strange turn when a seemingly routine medical examination becomes ever more coercive – it transpires that by signing a sheaf of medical documentation, Sawyer has also signed away her freedom, committing her to an institution with a far-from-benign approach to its patients. To makes matters worse, one of the nurses bears a distinct resemblance to Sawyer’s old stalker....

If you think this set up sounds schlocky and exploitative, then you’d be right. Despite being shot entirely on iPhones, Unsane’s experimental surfaces remain just that. Any ambiguity about Sawyer’s mental health, or indeed any attempt to explore it as a theme, is thrown away by a plot that unfolds in a distinctly B-movie fashion. Similarly, Joshua Leonard’s portrayal of David, Sawyer’s nemesis, moves rather too quickly from disturbed loner to eye-rolling maniac – at a certain point, the viewer flips from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to Wolf Creek, not necessarily a positive development.

Soderbergh might also have explored in more depth the theory, elaborated by fellow inmate Nate Hoffman (Jay Pharoah), that Sawyer’s incarceration is all part of an elaborate scam to collect on her health-insurance payouts. Unfortunately, this never rises beyond the level of absurd plot device, although it’s a good opportunity for British viewers to throw up their hands in horror at the American healthcare system (you’d never find the likes of David stalking the good old NHS wards).

That said, both Foy and Leonard give admirably committed performances, and it’s a pleasure to see Foy, in particular, burst out of the stuffy outfits into which The Crown forced her (the absence of those plummy English tones is a shock in itself). And there’s a splendid comic cameo from Soderbergh stalwart Matt Damon as a hyper-neurotic security expert, the kind of geeky nightmare you’d expect to crop up in an episode of Black Mirror.

For all its artificial charms, though, Unsane never amounts to a hill of beans. Soderbergh seems content for this to be a mere footnote in his wayward career – an accomplished and exciting footnote, to be sure, but the film-making equivalent of a champion cyclist doing wheelies to impress the girl next door. Those who enjoy playing Spot The Influence will have a ball, but one wonders if Soderbergh will ever make the masterpiece of which he’s so obviously capable.

Published on Bookanista, March 2018.