Steven Soderbergh is considered to be one of the most innovative and original Hollywood directors. He always manages to make interesting, unusual projects within and on the sidelines of the schematic construct of the film industry. LOGAN LUCKY from last year was an attempt to try a different distribution path and UNSANE was shot on an iPhone and is a variation on the typical B-movie plot. It‘s about Sawyer Valentini (Claire Foy) who flees from a stalker and moves to a new city and starts a new job. But the first intimate encounters with a man lose their eroticism as she remembers what she‘s been through. Sawyer looks for a psychiatrist who quickly attests that she has suicidal ideation and puts her in a closed asylum against her will where the young woman is surrounded by real weirdos. But that isn‘t enough: she recognizes one of the nurses as her stalker who seems to have followed her there. No one believes her and Soderbergh keeps both options open for a while and plays with the patterns of the psycho thriller as the excessive violence increases in ways Soderbergh has never done before. The lackluster aesthetic of the phone camera looks offensive, it‘s flat sharpness and ugly images is just the opposite of his otherwise brilliant aesthetic. UNSANE is an experiment, a raw, wild film that does go into the machinations of the pharma industry and sexism, but is a simple B-movie at its core and works excellently as one too.

Michael Meyns (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy