Like his own Side Effects, Steven Soderbergh’s Unsane combines a medical expose with a psychological thriller, this time with slightly stronger results. Claire Foy stars as Sawyer Valentini, a young financial analyst struggling to start a new life after freeing herself from a stalker (Joshua Leonard). After seeking counseling at a mental health facility, she finds herself institutionalized against her intentions. Is the hospital just trying to squeeze her for insurance money? Could something more be going on? Just how unstable is she, anyway? Like Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island and Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor, Unsane plays with these questions—until, about halfway through, it doesn’t, and instead lays its cards on the table and becomes a fairly conventional (if nasty) horror story. Soderbergh’s choice to film Unsane using camera phones brings some aesthetic interest to the proceedings. There are voyeuristic shots at the beginning of Sawyer walking down the street, while later moments—where the camera phone is matter-of-factly set on the table, the way you or I might do—give the movie an eerie familiarity that is at once banal and claustrophobic. The best thing about Unsane, however, is Foy, who channels the subdued panic she mastered on Netflix’s The Crown and ratchets it up into a fierce paranoia. Rubbed raw by threatening power dynamics in everyday life (leering men on the street, a sleazy new boss), Sawyer lashes out in anger and violence when the institution takes all of her power away. Soderbergh honors his star with a bravura closing freeze frame that captures her fully in frenzied character. The only thing we know for sure at this point is that Sawyer is more in need of therapy now than she was when Unsane began.
