UNSANE (2018) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

UNSANE (2018) movie

Genre              |   Thriller

Classification   |   MA 15+

Running time   |   98 minutes

Released         |   25 April 2018

cast

Claire Foy ... Sawyer Valentini
Joshua Leonard ... David Strine
Sarah Stiles ... Jill
Amy Irving ... Angela Valentini

director

Steven Soderbergh

writer

​Jonathan Bernstein ... (written by) &
James Greer ... (written by)

cinematographer

Steven Soderbergh

music

​

film editor

Steven Soderbergh

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box office result

Worldwide               $? million

Australia                 $? million

North America        $? million

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the best dialogue

x

x

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UNSANE (2018) MOVIE IMAGES

Images

Posters

Images

Posters

UNSANE (2018) STORY SYNOPSIS

​Sawyer Valentini relocates from Boston to Pennsylvania to escape from the man who's been stalking her for the last two years. While consulting with a therapist, Valentini unwittingly signs in for a voluntary 24-hour commitment to the Highland Creek Behavioral Center. Her stay at the facility soon gets extended when doctors and nurses begin to question her sanity. Sawyer now believes that one of the staffers is her stalker -- and she'll do whatever it takes to stay alive and fight her way out.

UNSANE (2018) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 24 April 2018
Pop ​Movee Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Steven Soderbergh’s UNSANE is as much a testament to the idea that “anyone can make a movie” as it is to the exploration of mental illness. Fortunately, the exploration of mental illness remains the focus throughout, as Soderbergh’s use of an iPhone 7 to film his new movie in no way impacts its story or themes.

The most important thing viewers need to know about UNSANE before entering the cinema is that everything that happens in the story is up for debate. Remember, this is a film that deals with disturbed minds and, even if events seem real, they may, in fact, be playing out exclusively in one person’s unbalanced mind...

UNSANE is about Sawyer Valentini, a young woman whose career is on the rise, but has been forced to flee Boston because of a stalker. Sawyer, played by Claire Foy, decides to seek help for the recurring “flashes” she has of her stalker and books in for counselling at a local psychiatric facility. For a such a smart young woman, whose job it is to prepare detailed financial analysis, it does come as something as something of a surprise when Sawyer manages to sign herself up for an overnight stay at the facility without understanding what she has done. If this is how easy it is to check into this type of hospital, there really needs to be some kind of regulation of the psychiatric hospital admission process introduced in America!

Upon Sawyer’s involuntary entry into the psychiatric facility, Jonathan Bernstein & Jamie Greer’s script positions the film’s main character as a contradiction, playing to the idea that what the viewer is seeing may not be entirely factual. As the story unfolds, it’s clear that Sawyer is not the cool, collected individual portrayed in the film’s opening scenes. She is prone to explosions of rage at the smallest of provocations. She’s manipulative; prepared to say anything to get out of trouble. She remains sympathetic only because the majority of UNSANE is told from her perspective.

Forging a relationship with Jay Pharoah’s Nate Hoffman, Sawyer’s belief of a greater unfolding conspiracy grows…

Much like a Michael Moore documentary, UNSANE takes square aim at the American health industry, slamming everything from the staff’s individual patient care practices to the collusion taking place between facility administrators and the health insurance sector. The film is very clear in its position. Those in charge of mental health care suffer from ‘Tin Ear’ syndrome and, quite possibly, are suffering more significant delusions than those they are treating.
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Steven Soderbergh’s filmography, detailing corporate excess and corruption, has more than enough examples to demonstrate his ability commitment to presenting broader underlying factual events relevant to current day society, even as the fictional characters of the story play out their drama in the foreground. ERIN BROCKOVICH is a great example of this, but even his more commercial films like OCEAN’S ELEVEN explore the same theme as UNSANE; the Underdog up against the Establishment. It’s a very relevant question for modern Western society, especially the United States. A society that found success in the pursuit of “rugged individualism” and the idea that one person can BE and DO anything is, in the 21st Century, driven by monolithic corporatism and so mired in bureaucratic process that an individual can be subsumed into the “Machine” and be made to completely disappear if the need arises.

To confirm Soderbergh’s ongoing concern with this, some may recall that he actually directed KAFKA, all the way back in 1991, with Jeremy Irons in the titular role of the character who encounters an organisation with sinister plans… UNSANE is not a hell of a long way from KAFKA.

UNSANE is a very good film, but there’s something just slightly amiss that prevents it from being a movie that people will talk about for years to come...

Claire Foy is excellent, as is Jay Pharoah. The film’s biggest challenge is with Joshua Leonard’s David Strine, Sawyer’s tormentor. Strine is clearly mentally unwell, but Leonard doesn’t quite capture the chaotic state of his antagonist’s mind. At one point, Sawyer describes Strine as a “simpleton”, but it’s not just an apt description for the character, it’s relevant in describing Leonard’s performance. The “Everyday Psycho” is not an easy cinematic creature to get right and only a handful of very, very good actors have managed it. Many, like Leonard, are simply acting their way to an outcome, while others go TOO BIG, entering into Jack Nicholson territory way too early in their performance.

To understand the standard required for authenticity, viewers may be familiar with these performances...

Daniel Day Lewis as Daniel Plainview in THERE WILL BE BLOOD.
Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in TAXI DRIVER.
Michael Rooker as Henry in HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER.

A more recent example is Barry Keoghan’s performance as Martin in 2017’s THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER.

It would be remiss not to mention the iPhone 7…

Steven Soderbergh loves getting close to his actors. Under the alias “Peter Andrews”, the Director has acted as his own Cinematographer on many of his films. This desire to light and shoot himself coupled with an “Up close and personal” approach makes something like the iPhone the perfect device for Soderbergh.

It’s small.
It’s light.
It’s manoeuvrable.

While it may not be able to provide the cinematic scope of more technologically complex cameras, for a film like UNSANE it’s perfect. Just the economics of it on their own make sense. Movies are not cheap to make and a mainstream device like an iPhone being used to make them will encourage more filmmakers to back their own projects because viewers accept the idea that what they’re seeing has been shot on a Smartphone. Soderbergh’s experiment, like George Lucas did with Digital cameras on the STAR WARS prequels, sets a new standard for the movie making process, allowing those with the passion and initiative opportunity to get involved. Accessible technology is no longer a valid reason not to make a movie.

Steven Soderbergh is a confident, successful movie maker whose forty plus films has allowed him to try something different. That doesn’t mean getting this movie made was any easier. Every movie takes sustained effort to reach the screen. UNSANE, however, serves as an important example of what someone can do with a reasonable story, a lot of initiative and a more lateral approach to getting the vital images that are the most critical in the creation of the cinema experience. More importantly, UNSANE doesn’t divert from the underlying concern that mental illness is hidden in plain sight. While society has gotten better at talking about it, the illness does not discriminate. That is the most powerful idea anyone who sees this movie can take with them after the lights have come up...

UNSANE MOVIE (2018) USEFUL LINKS

Unsane (film) - Wikipedia​
Unsane (2018) - IMDb
​Unsane (2018) - Rotten Tomatoes

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