Unsane - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Unsane

Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score: ​

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Movie
It’s always fascinating to me how quickly people will sign paperwork without reading it thoroughly. I myself sometimes catch myself doing it when I’m at the vet and I know it’s a basic consent form, but how many of us have been caught in purchases or contracts where we didn’t read the fine print? I guess you could say the moral of the story in Steven Soderbergh’s thriller Unsane is “read what you’re signing”, as the main character inadvertently turns her already problematic life into a living nightmare. A nightmare where a seemingly normal girl slips deeper and deeper into madness as time goes on. Unsane has a few unique visual flairs to it thanks to Soderbergh (including a different aspect ratio) and really amps up the first two acts with a taught sense of unease and nervousness, but ultimately has a few problems sticking the landing in the final act.

Unsane opens up with the point of view of a stalker. He is OBSESSED with a young woman who has caught his fancy, and latched on the “object” of his affection (and I really mean object), showering her with unwanted affection and unrequited love. A few moments later we’re introduced to his victim, one Sawyer Valentini (Claire Foy), a seemingly confident woman without any major problems. However, after a seemingly innocent attempt at a one night stand, we realize Sawyer is anything but problem free. Her experience with her stalker has given her an unhealthy fear of people, and she sees flickers of him in other people. She’s had to move away from her mother to a brand new city, and have a brand new job away from the problem, but the emotional scars from being stalked still are visceral and very real to her.

After going to a mental health facility to talk to a counselor, Sawyer inadvertently signs some “routine” paperwork, and before she knows it she’s being asked to step into a hospital room and have her bag searched. Still not sure what’s going on, Sawyer complies until she’s asked to do a strip search. Trying to leave the room she finds out that she’s locked in and is informed that what she signed was a voluntary 24 hour psyche hold. Frustrated, but left with no other option, the young woman spends the night in the psyche ward only to find out that her 24 hour hold is denied by the doctor, who says she has problems (due to her mentioning that after her stalker ordeal she had contemplated the idea of suicide) and he is recommending a 7 day involuntary hold.

Furious and scared, Sawyer learns from another inmate named Nate (Jay Pharoah) that this is common for the medical facility. They twist and warp a patient’s words during counseling so that the counselor recommends a psychiatric hold, or tricks them into signing one themselves. Then they suck the insurance company dry with a 7 day hold (which is the limit they can legally hold someone without a court order, and a court order requires a judge’s stamp of approval and PROOF that there is reason to keep someone there indefinitely), and then *poof! She’ll be labeled as cured. However, this is not a normal hold. While there Sawyer begins to see David (her stalker) in the face of an orderly. Becoming more and more agitated, her own fears and neurosis takes over and what was just a simple “wait and see” procedure turns into a downward spiral into madness where there was none before.

Soderbergh is a man who really loves to be inventive with his filming styles, and Unsane is no different a film for him. The auteur creates a film that really is unnerving and terrorizes the viewer with an odd array of colors and filming styles to create an unsettling mood. He actually had the entire film shot in 1.58:1 (a weird mix between the old fashioned 1.33:1 and full screen widescreen 1.85:1), and used an iPhone 7 Plus to shoot the entire thing! The result is an odd documentary style that puts objects very firmly into the fore ground (with some shots reaching directly into the camera at times). This technique makes it feel rough, raw, and extremely disheveled at times. It allows us to see Clarie’s experience as some sort of descent into a nightmare, and the nontraditional filming style gives the sensation of a first person “found footage” film, but without the actual tropes of a found footage movie.

One thing that Soderbergh does EXTREMELY well, is to make us wonder the entire movie. Is Sawyer really sane? Or has her traumatic experience with David (Joshua Leonard) actually made her a viable candidate for a forced stay? Is she ACTUALLY seeing David at the hospital? Or is she just projecting her fears onto the face of an innocent orderly? The surreal nightmare makes us question all of these things, but rest assure. Soderbergh doesn’t leave you hanging, as he wraps up those loose ends in the final act. However, that final act is also the problem with the film. The first 2 acts are done so incredibly cleverly and smartly that I have to give a round of applause for their nuance and energy. But it’s when he gets to the third act that the direction changes to a much more traditional thriller ending, and seems to undercut the trippy and nightmare fueled opening and middle act. The acting is top notch, with Claire giving an amazing performance, and some smartly done side characters who really add authenticity to the thriller’s premise.




Rating:

Rated R for disturbing behavior, violence, language, and sex references




Video:

As I mentioned in the actual film review, Steven Soderbergh shot the entire film using an iPhone 7 Plus and a $40 Moment Lens addition, and then transferred to home video with a 4K native resolution master from which the Blu-ray and 4K UHD disc were derived from. Before you start wondering, no this is NOT a handheld shaky cam movie. In fact, you can tell where some scenes are held in some sort of device to stabilize and create a much more fluid look to the film. Still, this is technically a smartphone movie, with some really cool post production techniques applied to it to create a unique visual style that really works.

For the Blu-ray disc I was more than satisfied with the picture. The iPhone 7 does a great job at capturing the resolution quite well, and with all of the really tight spots it makes sense why the handheld phone camera was used. It can be positioned just about anywhere in the room, and allows for overhead, underneath and little places where a bulky film camera just couldn’t reach. The colors are very heavily stylized for the film, with large swashes of the movie bathed in sickly yellow and green hues. There’s some open air shots where Nate and Sawyer talk outside, and while the green/yellow filters have been lightened up, they are still present and the white levels have been pushed extremely hot (some facial tones can look very creamy and overblown out in the daylight). At times in the third act, the movie takes a decidedly bluer look to it, with deep deep blues that accentuate Sawyer’s escape from the asylum and into the real world. Detail is excellent throughout, but the heavy color grading and the slightly soft look it produces keeps it from being utterly amazing.






Audio:

Unsane comes to both Blu-ray and 4K UHD with a stellar sounding 5.1 DTS-HD MA mix (although there is a secondary English DVS track on the Blu-ray), and is the lone track on both discs. While I would have kind of liked an Atmos upgrade for the discs, I have to agree that the 5.1 mix embedded on the disc is MORE than satisfactory at delivering a very well done auditory experience. The track is soft and humble, yet incredibly aggressive and explosive when the movie requires it to be. The tense and nerve wracking score gives the film a pulsating feeling, with oppressive waves of LFE and surround usage that really feels like the movie is pressing down on you. It can get a bit front heavy at times, with large portions of the movie only having dialog and some score usage to keep it going, but that score and some ambient noises in the mental health facility really give an encompassing feel to the movie.







Extras:

• Unsanity - Featurette

Final Score: ​

While the idea of Unsane is preposterous at first, there IS some basis of truth for the film. Back in 2016 there was an investigative bit of journalism that uncovered the shocking secret in the health care community. One of the largest mental health providers in the country was bending and twisting the truth a bit, using every method they possibly could to get someone committed for a week or so in order to bill the insurance. Much like the theory of “cops need ticket quotas”, this provider was trying to fill slots in their roster as a money making scheme. While Soderbergh has never come out and stated if that bit of journalism was his basis for the film, but whether intentional or not, his gaslighting of the situation makes for a chilling corollary to real life. A move which makes the movie even more uncomfortably terrifying than it already is. Universal’s Blu-ray is excellently done, with good audio and video, but a fairly minimal array of extras. It’s an intelligently done thriller, and one done with such unique visual flairs that it really has to be watched and experienced. There are some hiccups in the final act, but overall Unsane is a well done thriller.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Claire Foy, Joshua Leonard, Jay Pharoah
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Written by: Jonathan Bernstein, James Greer
Aspect Ratio: 1.58:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, English DVS DD 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
Studio: Universal
Rated: R
Runtime: 98 minutes
Blu-Ray Release Date: June 19th, 2018

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• Michael Scott
• May 11, 2017

Recommendation: Solid Watch