Soderbergh isn’t the first director to shoot a theatrical feature entirely with iPhones, but he’s the most prominent and well-established filmmaker to try it to date. “I look at this as potentially one of the most liberating experiences that I’ve ever had as a filmmaker.” He’s already shooting a second iPhone-only movie, an NBA drama called High Flying Bird. This is a gamechanger to me,” he told Indiewire. Soderbergh shot the entirety of Unsane with the iPhone 7 Plus, and he’s been singing the camera’s praises in the press. Is Foy’s character Sawyer actually being stalked, or are her minders right when they tell her she’s irrational, and can’t trust what she’s seeing?Īudiences may feel like they’re in the same position as Sawyer, though, being gaslighted over the huge gap between what they’ll see onscreen and what Soderbergh is telling them they’re seeing. For the first act or so, Soderbergh teases the audience with the possibilities.
Unsane plays a similar game, with The Crown’s Claire Foy as a fragile, angry woman convinced that her stalker has somehow infiltrated the psychiatric ward where she’s been committed. Films like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake Is Missing, and modern equivalents like Flightplan and The Forgotten all hinge on protagonists being told they’re deluded, and that someone they clearly remember never actually existed.
Steven Soderbergh’s new movie Unsane fits into a long line of “Who’s the crazy one here?” stories.