For all of the thoughts he’s publicly offered about the declining state of modern studio filmmaking, Steven Soderbergh has spent the past ten years or so putting his money where his mouth is. From experimenting with unusual leading performers to completely self-producing last year’s Logan Lucky entirely outside of the studio system, Soderbergh has been pushing his way down many of the new and emerging avenues available to filmmakers who want to more closely control their work from top to bottom.
As far as working within limitations goes, one of the more interesting new trends is how small a quality high-definition camera is now, and what film can do with that. Sean Baker’s outstanding feature Tangerine was shot entirely on modified iPhones, and now Soderbergh’s next feature Unsane was filmed using Apple’s technology as well. The paranoia thriller was shot in secret, and like Logan Lucky, Soderbergh will be co-distributing it with his own Fingerprint Releasing.
The first trailer for Unsane teases a disturbing exercise in reality-bending fear, with Claire Foy starring as a woman with a troubled history due to a stalker, who becomes so convinced that she’s being followed continuously by him that she seeks psychological help. However, when she seeks out a hospital to evaluate her, she’s deceived into being involuntarily committed to an institution. From there, her life begins to unspool as she’s forced to question whether her own perception is betraying her. Or not.
Unsane will be released in theaters on March 23rd.
