Unsane
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
- horror
- thriller
The story
A woman is involuntarily committed to a mental institution where she is confronted by her greatest fear.
What it’s like
Shot entirely on an iPhone, Unsane has a grainy, slightly smeared digital texture: flat fluorescent light, sickly green-grey walls, and tight, off-kilter framing that keeps the camera close to faces and doorways. Soderbergh's restless handheld movement and wide-angle lenses make hallways feel narrower than they are, and the sound design leans on hospital hum, sudden clatter and a dense, pulsing score that rarely lets the viewer breathe. Its vibe is clammy, claustrophobic unease, the kind that suits a late night alone or a mood for something tense and unsettling rather than cozy. Pacing is brisk and anxious, and the emotional register stays cold and fraught, following a young woman whose sense of reality is steadily destabilised as she tries to prove she is not who the institution says she is, with the mother-daughter wound running underneath. Intensity is moderate: there is some physical struggle and a few startling moments, and sexual content is limited, but the dread is psychological rather than gory. Not gentle. For viewers who want a stalker thriller built on paranoia, unreliable perception and oppressive institutional spaces.
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