We love our metal here at Metal Injection… but we dig movies too! Welcome to Cinema Fix, a movie guide tailored for the metal faithful. Sit back and relax after a long week of work and/or blast beats and enjoy one of our prestigious film selections. This week's pick is:
Unsane (2018)
Quick Pitch:
A grimy, paranoid, iPhone 7 Plus induced nightmare.
Synopsis:
Sawyer is a tortured young woman trying to move beyond her traumatic past. The victim of a deranged stalker, Sawyer has set up a new, isolated life for herself in a different town hoping to start over. Unfortunately, she suffers from immense PTSD and has trouble connecting or interacting with others. After a series of violent outbursts, Sawyer goes to a mental health professional and unwittingly signs papers committing herself for a 24 hour observation period. This brief stay turns into Sawyer being institutionalized against her will, indefinitely. Is she really crazy? Has her stalker really followed her into the hospital? Is Sawyer insane or is everyone else oblivious to the truth?
[youtube]https://youtu.be/u7KZrt_cHH0[/youtube]
Why it’s metal:
Growing up, many citizens of the punk & metal realms faced an uphill battle with oppressive authority figures. You went to their schools, you went to their churches, you went to their institutional learning facilities but never got that well deserved Pepsi, and faced ‘us versus them’ bullshit on a regular basis. Nobody understands you, nobody believes you, you might as well be a goddamn alien. Soderbergh’s guerilla iPhone film Unsane channels this struggle to a frightening extreme. Claire Foy's desperate portrayal of Sawyer is captivating, heartbreaking and kind of fun all at the same time. Her character is locked up against her will and fighting for her life but the powers that be refuse to believe her. Sawyer’s PTSD outbursts weren’t unwarranted, her stalker from Boston has followed her; posing as an employee in the mental hospital and has begun tormenting her anew. Toward the film’s final act, when Sawyer’s psychotic suiter David really goes off the rails and starts annihilating people, Unsane goes from disturbing psychological thriller to murderously schlocky fun. This click is a masterclass in B movie aesthetics. Shot entirely on an iPhone 7 Plus, Unsane looks grimy and claustrophobic as hell. Shooting on a phone allows Soderbergh to place the camera anywhere and only boosts the film’s unnerving, paranoid stalker vibe tenfold. Basically, Unsane is a psychological nightmare that’ll have you screaming “I’m not crazy! INSTITUTION!” at the screen a million times over.
Suggested listening:
Suicidal Tendencies – Institutionalized
For obvious reasons.
OR
Unsane – Committed
