Tonight I'm reviewing the 2018 thriller Unsane, directed by Steven Soderbergh (Ocean's franchise and Logan Lucky) and stars Claire Foy, Juno Temple, and Joshua Leonard (who you might remember from the original Blair Witch Project). The story consists of a lady named Sawyer Valentini (Claire Foy) who relocates from Boston to a small Pennsylvania town to escape a man who's been stalking her for the past 2 years. While consulting with a therapist, Valentini signs in for a voluntary 24-hour commitment at the Highland Creek Behavioral Center. Her stay at the facility soon gets extended when she starts seeing her alleged stalker at the facility, causing doctors and nurses to question her sanity. I was kind of looking forward to this film. Unfortunately, I didn't get to check it out in the theaters since it only played for one weekend where I live. I heard a lot of praise for it, so that made me really wanted to check it out more. While a good film, I was a bit disappointed in this one. I really don't understand the praise and I'll get into why here shortly. Starting with my pros, I thought Claire Foy did a pretty good job. She plays a woman who goes through a lot in life and is pretty drained and very convincing. Everyone else were decent as well. I did like the whole 90s gritty throwback to the film that kind of reminds me of the movie Kids, but with a bit more mainstream shots on some scenes. You can tell Steven Soderbergh was going for a low budget approach. I did like the close-up approaches they do with camera, which I agree with because it gives the film a more realistic approach, especially since it was shot on a iPhone. I've always had a fascination for locations of films being inside of an insane asylum. I do like some of the intense scenes where you see this girl being stuck inside this asylum and nobody is believing a word she's saying. Now onto my cons. I had an issue with some of the scenes changing over to the next one. It felt as if it was meant for TV and a commercial was cut out and then it goes to another scene. Whether that was intentional or not, it's still felt awkward in a bad way. In the beginning , I was really into the scenes of her not being able to get out of this situation she's in, but it does become very repetitive as the time goes long and I got bored at some parts. My biggest complaint of all is the ending. While it does question her sanity, which I liked, the ending was very underwhelming. It literally follows every movie cliché. For a director like Steven Soderbergh, I did expect a clever twist ending. I wonder if this was a project he wanted to do just for the fun of it. If so, I understand, but that doesn't give you an automatic pass from me. It's watchable but forgettable.
Final Score:
What were your thoughts on this film? Leave me a comment below and I'll see you on my next review.