Unsane (2018) * * *

Directed by:  Steven Soderbergh

Starring:  Claire Foy, Joshua Leonard, Jay Pharoah, Juno Temple, Amy Irving, Aimee Mullins

Steven Soderbergh shot Unsane on an iPhone, which surely saves money on production expenses, but it adds to the film's effectiveness.    There is an eerie feeling that its protagonist's space is not her own and Unsane deliberately adds the topical subtext of the #MeToo movement.    It functions on the level of a nightmare; one in which Sawyer (Foy) is not only imprisoned against her will, but her protests are believed to be byproducts of her supposed insanity, so no one takes them seriously.  

We first meet Sawyer speaking curtly to a customer over the phone at her new job 450 miles away from home.    She fled her hometown to get away from a stalker and the psychological effects linger.   She is tense, impersonal, and distrusting.    Her Tinder hookup date goes awry, and Sawyer consults a local behavioral center for therapy.    After filling out a few forms which she was made to believe were your typical routine medical forms, Sawyer unwittingly gives her consent to be institutionalized and is soon held for "observation".  

Fellow patient Nate (Pharoah), who is undergoing opioid withdrawal treatment, befriends Sawyer and tells her how insurance plays a big part in how the center will treat her.    When the insurance stops paying, she will suddenly be "cured", which is estimated to be seven days.    Sawyer is not a model patient.   She attacks fellow patients who invade her space and adds to the center's belief that she is a danger to herself and others.    Her protests to the doctors go unheeded, especially when she discovers her stalker in the flesh working at the center.    Or a man she believes to be her stalker, a bearded giant named George (Leonard), who she knew as David back home.    Even if George is indeed David and is indeed continuing to stalk her, no one believes her anyway.

There isn't much suspense as to whether George is her stalker under a new identity.   He may as well wear a t-shirt which says, "STALKER" on it.    Sawyer confides in Nate, who manages to maintain access to a cell phone even though they are forbidden, and tells her story of how she met the obsessive and dangerous David/George.    Why does Nate have a cell phone while others don't?   And why does he write things down in a notebook?    We know there is more to Nate than meets the eye.

Even though Unsane was shot on an iPhone, it does not look cheap or like something one posts on YouTube.    The colors are drained in the shots, and we feel like we are watching surveillance footage; almost feeling guilty for not intervening.   Foy gives us a remarkable performance, mostly because she is edges and elbows and not necessarily easy to like.    Did her experience with David make her that way?    Or are there deeper psychological scars hinted at by her mother (Irving), who tries to rescue Sawyer legally but to no avail.    Her lawyer is so disinterested in Sawyer's case that he hangs up on her mother in mid-sentence.

The final twenty minutes or so play out like a routine slasher thriller, which is somewhat disappointing considering how well Unsane was working before that.    But, the payoff isn't fatal to the overall viewing pleasure of Unsane, which combines Hitchcock-like suspense with the topical undercurrent of how women are not listened to even when they are screaming at the top of their lungs.    Sawyer is under attack by the center and by her stalker, but the medical machine scarcely notices or even cares.