Steven Soderbergh’s iPhone-shot thriller Unsane looks intense

Steven Soderbergh is Hollywood’s most forward-thinking filmmaker. The Oscar-winning director has been a early adopter of cinema innovations like digital cinema, day-and-date distribution strategies and, most recently, creating moving image storytelling specifically for our smartphones with miniseries Mosaic, a choose-your-own-adventure noir starring Sharon Stone that was distributed through a mobile app. A phone is involved once again in his latest experiment Unsane: a low-fi horror-thriller shot entirely on an iPhone.

The trailer for Unsane dropped last night and it looks a pulpy B-movie treat. It follows The Crown’s Claire Foy as a young woman with a digital stalker, but when she reports the creep to the authorities they think she’s certifiable and bang her up in a high security mental facility. Is this a case of gaslighting? Many a psychological drama has explored this idea, from, well, Gaslight through to Bunny Lake is Missing, The Lady Vanishes and last year’s Cure for Wellness. Post the #MeToo movement, however, we suspect the story of a woman not being listened to when she claims she’s being harrassed might have a different resonance.

While the plot might be nothing new, the real innovation is in the shooting style. While in Sundance, Soderbergh discussed the idea behind shooting on an iPhone. “I think this is the future,” he told Indiewire. “Anybody going to see this movie who has no idea of the backstory to the production will have no idea this was shot on the phone. That’s not part of the conceit.”

We’re not sure if this is quite true. From viewing the trailer, Unsane is nowhere near as polished visually as Soderbergh’s other movies. But there is an appeal to its grubby, lo-fi visuals, which recalls David Lynch’s Inland Empire, another visually inventive film following a woman who may or may not be losing her mind shot through with a scuzzy digital aesthetic.

Soderbergh isn’t the first filmmaker to make a major feature on an iPhone camera: Sean Baker beat him to it with 2015’s white hot tragicomedy Tangerine. While Baker switched to gorgeous 35mm for his followup The Florida Project, it sounds like Soderbergh was so taken with this way of shooting that he might stick with it. "I look at this as potentially one of the most liberating experiences that I’ve ever had as a filmmaker, and that I continue having,” he told Indiewire. “The gets that I felt moment to moment were so significant that this is, to me, a new chapter.”

Take a look at the trailer in the player above or on YouTube.

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Unsane is released on 23 Mar by 20th Century Fox