UNSANE. Bleecker Street Media, 2018. Joshua Leonard, Claire Foy, Sarah Stiles, Marc Kudisch, Amy Irving. Director: Steven Soderbergh.

   Steven Soderbergh’s Unsane is everything you want a solid psychological thriller to be – and more. Captivating and filled with tension, the movie stars Clare Foy as Sawyer Valentini, a white collar professional who relocates to Pennsylvania to start a new life.

   Her old one in Boston was tainted by the fact that she had been stalked for well over a year by the obsessive David Strine (Joshua Leonard). Life in Pennsylvania, however, isn’t exactly going as planned. Sawyer decides to seek out mental health counseling at a place called Highland Creek. She is told to fill out a series of forms, not realizing that the facility is going to use her “consent” to institutionalize her against her will and then charge her insurance for her stay.

   As you might expect, Sawyer fights back against the staff, leading them to view her as dangerous. Despite warnings from Nate (Jay Pharoah), a friendly fellow “inmate,” she increasingly pushes back against her confinement. At that point, the staff really does think she belongs there. As tension mounts, things come to a head when she thinks she sees her stalker, David, at the facility. He’s working there and giving out meds to the patients.

   But is he? Or is it all in her head? As the movie progresses, secrets are revealed and Sawyer must fend for her life against a man who has developed a bizarre fascination with her. Problem is: she’s stuck in an asylum and doesn’t know who she can trust. Even her ally Nate isn’t who he pretends to be.

   Filmed on an Apple iPhone 7 Plus, Unsane looks and feels like something different from what moviegoers are used to. Although I was skeptical about what an entire film captured on a phone would look like, I have to say that I was very impressed. The aspect ratio works well, especially for a movie which is meant to be claustrophobic.

   Overall, I found Unsane to be an effective thriller, one that evokes those made in the 1980s and 1990s. It is bolstered by Foy’s solid performance as a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The movie has a lot to say about the corrupt health care industry as well, something that, to the filmmakers’ credit, never comes across as preachy or didactic.

   As you can tell, I liked this one quite a bit. Even if, or better yet despite, how the whole thing may come across as far fetched.