Steven Soderbergh shot his new psychological thriller Unsane (which is now playing in general release) on an iPhone 7 Plus and in the unusual aspect ratio of 1.56:1. Slightly wider than the classic Academy ratio (which is 1.33:1) but noticeably narrower than the formats in which most modern movies are shot, this aspect ratio heightens the film’s sense of claustrophobia as much as the iPhone imagery heightens its sense of disorientation. Soderbergh uses the consumer-grade technology to achieve peculiar effects with depth—you can’t quite discern in the flat images the distances between people and objects—and this provides a clever visual analog to the drama, in which the heroine (Claire Foy) is never sure of whom she can trust. The technology also allows the director to execute plenty of his trademark fly-on-the-wall shots, shooting in tight corners of rooms and from extreme low angles. The formal playfulness may occasionally undermine Unsane’s narrative tension, but it keeps the movie engaging on a visual level.
The filmmakers raise the possibility that Sawyer really needs psychiatric help when she claims that an orderly at the clinic (Joshua Leonard) is the same man who had been stalking her in Boston. This claim makes her seem crazy, so do her violent outbursts against the orderlies and other patients. Unsane generates some decent suspense from the question of Sawyer’s sanity (in fact the film’s tagline is “Is she or isn’t she?”), but the film has other things in mind than delivering a straightforward mystery. In a wildly implausible twist, the orderly and the stalker turn out to be the same person; in flashbacks Soderbergh reveals that he met Sawyer when she provided home health care to his late father in his final years. Believing Sawyer to be his soul mate, he began stalking her, eventually following her to the mental health facility in Pennsylvania.
