Unsane

Unsane is Steven Sodorberg's 2018 thriller.  It was shot mostly with an Iphone and is the story of Sawyer Valentini.  Sawyer relocates from Boston to a small town in nowhere Pennsylvania.  She relocates as a way in hopes to escape the man whom has been stalking her for the last two years.  Once she relocates, she goes to see a counselor, and unbeknownst to herself, she signs papers to have herself committed for 24 hours.  The 24 hours then becomes a week, and she then becomes convinced that her stalker is one of the night nurses.  She does what she can to try to survive and get out.

While this wasn't the best thriller I've seen this year, I think it brings to light some of the stigmas most of what our society has towards getting help.  At the same time, the movie can serve as a hindrance for a lot of people to want or be able to admit or try to get the help they need.  While I'm sure that there are psychiatric centers like the one portrayed in this movie that tries to get patients by any means necessary and bill insurance for what they need. 

I appreciated the approach of using an IPhone to shoot this movie, however, I think that Soderberg used this method, as this seems to be the new up and coming method to approach film-making.  At times, the phone allowed for some new fresh angles.  The downside, was in a lot of the dark hospital scenes or forest scenes, the coloration of the shots becomes distracting.  The approach fails to have the sheer beauty of Tangerine, the 2015 crime thriller movie that started the iphone approach to filming. 

The thriller aspect of the movie, was mostly a sleeper approach, wanting to appeal more towards the "smart people horror movie" crowd.  (The Witch, Good Night Mommy, A Quiet Place would also fall into the same category).  While the movie had some good seat jumper moments, and surprises and plot twists.  I wanted to enjoy the movie, and while the story seemed new to the genre, it still fell short.  I had paired this with a double feature with the 12 days documentary.  While I think the two served as a good contrast on the topics of self help and care, ultimately it still fell short a bit in being a solid approach for what I was expecting with this film.