Daily Horror Movie: Unsane

A woman visits a psychiatric clinic and through a combination of malfeasance and bureaucracy finds herself involuntarily committed. While trying to make the system see reason, she discovers that she has been followed into the hospital by the man who has been stalking her for the last two years, and he has some well-thought-out plans for her future.

This is a horror movie for 2018: insurance scams, undercover reporters, stalkers, toxic masculinity, bureaucratic nightmares, opioids–it has many of the real horrors of the current age in such over-the-top doses that it’s painfully realistic. If there had been a little politics thrown in, it would have been just a bit too much.

I like that Sawyer (played by Claire Foy) is abrasive and rude and kind of unlikable; it made me root for her as a character, though I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like her as a co-worker. Her stalker, David (played by Joshua Leonard), is a completely detestable “incel” type, which also seems right for this movie: finding something to like about him would have ruined an incredibly satisfying ending.

The gimmick of the movie (because every movie these days needs a gimmick, I guess) is that it was shot on an iPhone; except for the intimate, handheld feel of the movie, it doesn’t really have much of an impact (which may be a testament to the improving quality of smartphone video more than anything else). Overall, I thought this was a nice little psychological horror movie with some dark satire running under it, well worth a watch.