Unsane

The first clue that Claire Foy’s protagonist has problems is that she tries to have a one-night stand with the guy from You. Thankfully her story isn’t as boring as his.

Quite what her story is, Unsane never really answers. On the one hand it’s a story about a woman with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder who sees her ex-stalker everywhere. On the other, it’s about an insurance scam and how people often end up as nothing more than cogs in a system.

Whereas other films about people suddenly stuck in mental hospitals tends to make them sympathetic or interesting, Unsane goes out of its way to make Sawyer Valentini someone you don’t want to root for. Like any unreliable narrator you can’t believe what you’re being told. Was she really being stalked? Or this all just in her head? Has she been tricked into signing the so-called boilerplate or does she actually need treatment? Are we seeing what is happening or just what she thinks is happening?

Even as more pieces of the puzzle fall into place, and we meet her stalker, David Strine, we still can’t help wonder. Indeed, given the ambiguous ending and the way it undermines the rest of the narrative, the whole story may be nothing more than a delusion while the real Sawyer rots away doped up on Thorazine; otherwise as violent as Violet. The girl with the dreadlocks who’s obsessed with her.

Indeed, if Violet were a figment of Sawyer’s imagination, in which her real psyche clashes with her imagined one, this film would be conventional in its delivery. For Sawyer is violent and combative from the start. Unable to heed the advice of Nate, the undercover journalist trying to expose the insurance scam, that she should keep quiet and do her time; she quickly ends up strapped to her hospital bed. Sure, it could be a mix up with the drugs they give her. Or it could be a manifestation of what’s happening in the real world. 

Claire Foy excels in this role but she’s helped by excellent backing from both Juno Temple, as Violet and a thoroughly creepy performance from Joshua Leonard as David Strine. He’s obsequious and condescending at the same time. Ingratiating but in the way a parent is when they want their child to do something. That he’s killed three people and yet breaks down when Sawyer lays out some home truths is of course entirely consistent with the world she’s built.

Besides the narrative, clever use of colour backs up the sense of a story spiralling out of control because the person telling it no longer has a grip on reality. As she is led into the hospital, the corridors are barely lit and the fat nurse escorting her might as well be Charon rowing her across the Styx. Later as her stalker kidnaps her, the world is bathed in greens and blues so vivid they drown out all other colours.

Then there’s the camera angles. The close ups are slightly grainy. Heads appear almost too big. And it was done on an iphone. Besides being a metaphor for how Sawyer’s narrative neatly wraps itself despite the glaring plot hole (just how did Strine get a job at the hospital she was going to be locked up in?), it also showcases the way anyone with a smartphone can now tell their own story.

Maybe that’s the ultimate message of this film. Forget trauma. Forget the ethical conundrum of doctors working for profit when they’re supposed to uphold the Hippocratic oath. And instead focus on how so many of us seem utterly self-obsessed and in need of constant attention.