Episode 032: How Stalking and Insurance Scams Drive a Person Insane—Unsane (2018)

Join Alex in a solo episode as he discusses the psychological concepts in a sleeper indie thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh, Unsane (2018). It stars Claire Foy as a woman suffering from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from a stalker, but everyone at the health clinic thinks she’s delusional, because who stalks these days, amirite? Anyway, it’s a cautionary tale about believing women and insurance scams! The idea for covering this film came from a General Psychology class Watch Party on Alex’s Twitch.tv channel (https://twitch.tv/cogpsychprof).

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Legal stuff:
1. All film clips are used under Section 107 of Title 17 U.S.C. (fair use; no copyright infringement is intended).
2. Intro and outro music by Sro (“Self-Driving”). Used under license CC BY-SA 4.0.
3. “Et Voila” used under license.

Episode Transcription

ALEX: Hey everybody, and welcome to the CinemaPsych Podcast! The podcast where psychology meets film! I’m your host, Dr. Alex Swan and we’ve got a solo episode for you today. So it’s just going to be me talking about a movie that I saw a couple of weeks ago and really, really need to talk about. Really, really need to talk about because it was insane. How Unsane? Get it? See what I did there? It was a movie called Unsane. I know. So anyways, we’re going to be talking about Unsane in this episode. Well, I’m going to be talking about Unsane in this episode. I will jump into it in just a minute. But what I first want to talk about here at the top of the show is some good news for the podcast. Some great news for the podcast. So, this next year of the podcast—so I will say, that we can say that it is even though it is a 2021 kind of thing, it does-It does carry us through to mid-2022. So what I’m talking about is amazing, amazing. The podcast was just awarded a grant from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology, STP, which is a organization that you hear about a lot on this show because that is the organization that I am—the professional organization that I am a member of and if you are a teacher of psychology and you are not a member of that organization, then I do strongly recommend. It’s $25 a year. APA Division 2 and so you could be a member of APA at the same time. But in any case we were awarded a Small Partnerships Grant for the work that we do and have done on this show. Really awesome. We were just awarded it in the early part of last month and you know, it’s it’s really awesome because I put the-put the time and energy into writing a proposal and was recognized. It’s not full-on sponsorship. But it is enough to get us making our hosting payments on Podbean and the website hosting. All of that is going to be taken care of this year by this Small Partnership Grant and I used that energy to reach out to a bunch of new—a bunch of new people that will be appearing on the show in the coming months. And-and so I’m super excited about what this next year has in store. I mean, we’re not-not yet at the two year mark—that will be in July of the show, but we are going to be moving forward—a bunch of like I said, a bunch of new names. A bunch of returning—a bunch of returning guests hosts will also be on the show, so keep an ear out for that because I’m super excited where the show is going. Now that we’ve gotten, you know, a little bit of an from various from various places from STP and the Small Partnerships Grant and the advertising that sort of goes into that on their website. And you know, the continued advertising that I will be continuing to do on social media and in various places like that. I think by the time I’m a midcareer psychologist, my goal is to be the film guy. Is to be the film and psych guy. I think that’s-I think that’s the worthy goal. And that’s the goal we’re going to shoot for.

ALEX: OK, so this movie this movie Unsane. I’ll talk about where I got this movie in my on my radar here in just a second. But just to give you a little bit of a background, because it’s an indie-ish film is directed by Steven Soderbergh, so not super Indie in the sense that like this is unknown name director or anything like that. Matt Damon makes a cameo because, you know, he’s good friends with Steve. And so I thought that was-I thought when I saw that I thought that was hilarious. Spoiler alert, rare cameo-watchers over here. But the film stars Claire Foy, who is probably best known for her first two seasons appearance as starring appearance as Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown. Joshua Leonard is the other main character, and then there’s a few other people here and there that have bit roles… and some odd acting choices. Jay Pharaoh’s in it. He meets an untimely demise, which is, unfortunate because I do like Jay Pharaoh and I do like how he approached this role. Amy Irving’s in it as well, plays Claire Foy’s mother as a character. But really, the majority of the film centers around Claire Foy. I would say more than 50% of the shots in this movie were-were tight-tights shots on Claire Foy’s face in various-various angles and I’ll talk about those angles in a little bit. So Claire Foy—just a brief plot outline here. Claire Foy is some sort of white collar mid-level executive who by the end of the movie becomes like the executive with an assistant? But in this case she’s just a midlevel office.-varied job. I don’t know exactly what she is, but she goes and sees a counselor because she is having recurring hallucinations of a man guy that we are told is stalking her. We learn about all of this within, like the first five minutes of the film. It’s not a very long film, by the way. It’s only an hour and 30 minutes, and so she-she sees this counselor and they take her into what appears to be a psychiatric hold because she mentions that-she mentions that she’s depressed. And she mentioned some inkling of thoughts of suicide. And so they, because she says that, and they record that down, she gets put into the psychiatric hold. But nothing’s being told to her. In that case, nothing is indicated that this is what is going on. The orderlies and the nurses at this facility essentially just shepherd her from one place to the next and she is completely left in the dark.

DENNIS: Sawyer Valentini? I’m Dennis, please follow me.

SAWYER: I don’t have a lot of time, I-I should be back at work so, what am I doing in here?

DENNIS: I need to look through your bag.

SAWYER: Why?

DENNIS: Don’t worry, you’re not being singled out. I look through everyone’s bag, it’s procedure.

SAWYER: Excuse me, that’s my stuff!

NURSE BOLES: Good afternoon I’m Nurse Bulls. Can you strip down to your underwear for me? Please take off your clothes down to your underwear and remove all your jewelry. Do you understand? If you need help removing your clothes— What? To check for identifying marks: scars, birthmarks, moles. It’s to protect you, the other patients and the hospital. But I’m not sure what’s happening here. I, uh… The nursing assessment includes a head to toe skin examination. It’s a hospital wide policy. There’s nothing invasive about it. Look I have to go. I’m going to be late for work. The door is locked for your privacy. I need you to take off your clothes down to your underwear and remove all your jewelry.

SAWYER: There’s nothing wrong with me. I just needed to talk to someone, and the counselor said that I—did she tell you to do this?

NURSE BOLES: Miss Valentini, are you refusing to cooperate?

SAWYER: What happens if I do?

NURSE BOLES: It would be better for everyone, but especially yourself if you just do as I ask.

ALEX: And it turns out this place is a group psychiatric facility for various types of-various types of psychiatric illnesses. But it’s a group home with a group— home with a group setting, group sleeping situation. So this group facility doesn’t have much in the way of activities. They will sleep in one large-large room. They do group therapy, but then they do group cafeteria. But then there’s really nothing else left to do. And once-once Claire Foy’s character Sawyer figures out that she’s being held, she tries to call the police. The police come and they review that they-that she voluntarily signed a release. However, when she signs the release, she does not know what she is signing. They do not tell her what she is signing. Turns out it’s not an involuntarily-involuntary hold. It’s a voluntary hold. This is this is the shadiest part of the film.

ALEX: So before we even get into the psychology of this, I want to mention where I came to this, where I came into this film. I was looking for a film to show my Psych 101, my gen psych, my intro psych students, a psychopathology film, and I came across this because I was going to be doing a Twitch Watch Party. Now if you’re not familiar with my Twitch-Twitch TV account, I stream every weekend, and, prior to the end of the semester I was, you know, streaming class here or there and-and I did this optional Watch Party because you have to have Prime to join in Watch Party with my commentary off to the side. And so it had to be on Prime. So this was available on Prime in this month, in May 2021. So I-I saw it. I looked at the trailer and I was like wow, this is actually really nice. I like this because it’s new. It’s recent—came out in 2018. You know, there’s-there’s not much to it and I was like with the psych aspect, they’re kind of making it this situation of is “she actually psychotic or not.” And they say psychotic in the-in the psychopathological sense where it’s just like is she suffering from hallucinations and delusions and she should be in this home, or is there something other-some other outside force that is keeping her there? And so we watched it. I enjoyed it. The overall take on it is sort of better than mediocre. Better than average. It’s not like an amazing film on psychopathology. There’s far better ones, of course, but it was-it was-it was decent. It was nice. I-I would, I think I would use it in a class if, you know, once-once pandemic things get back to normal, I think I would use it in a class, you know, to sort of balance out some of the psychopathology movies that I’ve used in the past that explored different that explore different disorders and that sort of thing, but this one has another layer to it that I really like.

ALEX: That layer is the whole healthcare aspect to this, right? So patients’ rights kind of issue and insurance and all of that. But of course this is this “thriller” aspect of the movie is the psychological thriller aspect of the movie is like really US/American. It wouldn’t work in a country that has some sort of universal healthcare or some single payer system, because I don’t think you would see it in that-that has to do with the aspect of the plot that is Oh so anti-insurance-an anti-insurance payments and-and private organizations that work to rig the system to their benefit. The idea here is that they don’t. This behavioral center—that’s private, I guess, for-profit behavioral center doesn’t really tell their patients what it is that they’re being “committed” for. They’re just like “here, sign this.” This is the paperwork and essentially funnel people into their-their situation, and so because they end up signing a voluntary release for being committed, then they are not breaking the law by holding you against your will. However, the vast majority of state, I believe— it’s hard finding a direct to answer for anything beyond state because I think this is like a state law versus a federal law, here in the United States. But even though Claire Foy signed a voluntary commitment and there’s probably fine print that there’s a time-time limit or likely to be a situation where, you know, there are restrictions for requests requesting to leave, but overall, I think it’s important to identify where the movie ignores some real life stuff to get to the, we’ll call it, drama.

ALEX: So the first thing I want to mention here is the fact that, you know, Claire finds herself in this involuntary “voluntary” situation that she wants to get out of, and the movie for, I guess, the sake of drama for the sake of the thriller aspect, they sort of dance around the fact that she could leave upon request when she asked for it. Now it appears that she can’t do anything about it. But in all actuality, you know, she could request to leave and she could write a, you know, argue for discharge and, you know, that even though the doctors like you, you should probably stay. “You know, you kinda said that you wanted to kill yourself and you think that you have an issue. So maybe you should stay.” And honestly, if she said to the doctor at that point, “no, I-I think I should be able to leave and you should let me leave.” Then she does get the fair shake to leave. Like, there’s no reason she shouldn’t be allowed to leave… unless… unless… the organization wants her to stay and that’s what we come to find out. This behavioral health center was doing something super shady. You come to find out that they were keeping people there in an effort to milk all the insurance money out of them. And as soon as the insurance company says, “Oh no, we’re not going to pay for them anymore.” That’s when this behavioral health clinic is going BYE! So they keep people there, medicate them, and then they get to—then they send them out when they’re no longer profitable. This is rough, but… this allows the other aspect of the movie to play out. So it’s-it’s in service to the rest of the plot. It’s, you know, pretty dastardly on its own, which is super rough because, you know, these these patients don’t get to have their phones, they get to make one phone call, you know, every X number of days or whatever, you know. So Claire Foy makes her first phone call to the police and that doesn’t really play out. And then there’s this the exchange between the officers and the woman at the front desk suggesting that the police had come there often. They come there often. And you know, it’s when the police come often to a place where people are calling, saying I’m being held against my will, then you kind of have to look at the place that’s being called—that the place where all these calls are coming from, and I don’t think the police should get-get to go, “no, I don’t think there’s a problem here.” Let’s just look at the release forms like no, you need to get somebody to come and investigate this person, and luckily Jay Pharaoh’s character in this movie—his main goal is to make sure that the all of the shady stuff that happens at this place gets beat down and at the end of the movie you find that out. But I want to be clear and say-state that even though you do have a, you know, you could be tricked into signing a voluntary waiver. You—any organization does not get-get to control. Now this is different to an involuntary hold which can only be placed on somebody for a maximum set of hours. So I believe the state that I am in, 72 hours is the maximum amount of involuntary hold, and this is only supposed to be used in situations where somebody is an immediate danger to themselves or to others, and so you cannot force somebody to stay in any one place, hospital or otherwise, whether the hospital has a psychiatric ward or several psychiatric wards or even a behavioral health place like this, you cannot be forced to say longer than a certain amount of time. And even after that time has passed and you are being held, you cannot be held further. Even though doctors do have this… a 72-hour window to respond to any request for discharge, you still can’t be held against your will beyond that first involuntary hold. Now in Claire Foy’s case, in her character Sawyer’s case, she—it is 100% there voluntarily from the beginning, but she is consistently convinced to stay over and over and over again by the health administrator, by the psychiatrist attending in charge, by the nurses. She’s consistently convinced, and even when she finally gets a chance to call her mom and have her help her get out, her mom comes and talks to the administrators and talk sto the doctors and they convince her, the mother to make her stay, and again, with the clear intent that we find out later in the movie that this is all sort of an insurance scam by the administrators of this behavioral health place, and that there’s really no actual helping being-being—help being given. There’s very, very little forms of it. And most of it’s just like medication therapy, which is, I gotta tell you, it’s pretty rough in a place like that. You really, if you’re going to be in a place, a behavioral health center like that, you want more than medication therapy. You need-you need one-on-one therapy. You need group therapy. You need activities. You need things like life skills training, especially if you’re there for some sort of psychotic disorders like new. If you’re going to leave there eventually, you’re going to need some training on how to manage this new disorder that you find yourself in or-or deal with the bipolar depression or deal with major anxiety, like agoraphobia or some really impactful OCD or something like that. Or PTSD. You know, you should be getting the training and counseling that you need and not just what you see in this movie. Of course, like I said, it’s in service of the other part of the plot.

ALEX: Hey listener, thanks for sticking around this episode. I hope you’re enjoying it. Anyway, I need your help in growing this podcast audience. In past episodes I’ve asked you to share this podcast with five of your friends. Let’s keep doing that. Share this podcast on social media, especially if you really liked an episode. Share that episode. Tell five of your friends or family if they have an interest in film or psychology, or even better both. Growing the audience is our goal for the second year of programming. And so we need your help to get that done. Other ways to contribute to the podcast include tips to our PayPal found on our website, becoming a patron at patreon.com/cinemapsychpod. Rocking some sweet merch from our Spreadshirt shop. And/or leaving us a rating or review on your favorite podcast service. Now back to the show.

ALEX: Now, the psychopathology that I would teach in this in the first half of the movie is related to trauma-induced schizophrenia. So-so acute schizophrenia or reactive schizophrenia in this case, and this kind of schizophrenia can occur at any age. An individual and generally, well, obviously marked by a break from reality, hallucinations, delusions, other positive symptoms. In this case, Sawyer, the main character, only presents with some positive—what seems to be positive symptoms—of schizophrenia, but it occurs after traumatic experience, which is the case for this kind of schizophrenia. Early in the film, as I mentioned, she is -she hallucinates a different face on somebody she takes home after meeting them in a bar and she immediately ditches this guy at in her own apartment, goes to the bathroom and has a breakdown. We could find out later because she goes and seek some help that she was stalked.

SAWYER: So while I was fantasizing about being the Savior who would pull his father back to clarity, David was having his own fantasies.

DAVID STRINE: He would want us to be together.

DETECTIVE FERGUSON: OK, let’s talk about Sawyer Valentini in Boston, year zero. Obviously I would recommend sensors on all your doors and windows, and I would swap the terrorist doors out for a steel cord door. Update your deadbolt. I want to talk to you about situational awareness. OK, where’s the nearest police station? Where is the nearest fire station? These are things that should always be right on the tip of your tongue. Parking. I know you have parking in the rear of the building with the back entrance. I’m going to ask you not to use that anymore. I know it’s convenient, but I would advocate selling your car and using a ride service. If you can’t or won’t do that, I would say park on the street, preferably under a light source and come back and walk through this this courtyard here where people can see you. With your keys in your hand, by the way, you want your keys always in your hand. You don’t want to be digging around in your purse in the dark for your keys, and I’ll talk to you about and help you with a go-bag. You know, just cash, credit cards, change of clothes, flashlight, charger, that kind of thing, a firearm if you’re open to that idea of purchasing and registering a firearm and learning how to use it. Think about altering your routin. When you go to work. When you leave work. That kind of thing. About social media: are you on any social media accounts?

SAWYER: I’m on Facebook, but my accounts private.

DETECTIVE FERGUSON: Right, OK, that’s that’s no good because he’d be able to, you know, figure out a friend of yours from marching band or sorority sister and go get photos from them, create a bogus account and then trying to friend you that way. Your friends know your email. Just that’s enough. Just delete the Facebook today and then talk to your friends. You know, be open about this, inform them what’s going on, tell him not to mention you, don’t tag you on Instagram, you know. You know, baby showers or Chardonnay day with the girls or, you know, whatever it is, if there’s someone taking a picture, you do whatever you can to get out of it. All right, think of your cell phone as your enemy and this, your new best friend.

ALEX: But we don’t find out who this stalker is or why he’s stalking her until later in the movie because Steven Soderbergh wants you to believe that some of the things that she is seeing aren’t actually there. And even the tagline of the movie or the brief blurb, as I should say, “confronted by her greatest fear. But is it a real or a product of her delusion?” So the idea is that she’s being-she’s being held at this behavioral health center because she believes that she is being stalked, right? That’s the delusion. That’s the false belief that she’s being stalked. And I love it too, because it says “involuntary committed to a mental institution.” It’s it’s not-not a mental institution, but it’s—she’s also not involuntarily committed so to speak, it’s voluntary. And then they lie to her. Voluntarily committed. And then they lie. So I mean, that’s different there. But Steven Soderbergh, at the beginning, in the first half of this movie—of the first third of the movie, wants you to think that she is unwell. In some ways, and I mentioned that, that the filmography—the cinematography, not the filmography. I’m sorry, that’s a list of films, cinematography in this movie is on purpose. There’s a lot of Dutch angles, which if you’re not familiar, Dutch angles are sort of off-kilter. They’re not level with a person’s eye line. They’re off-kilter, sort of at a 45-ish degree angle. These Dutch angles represent reality being askew. And there are a lot of close-ups, a lot of tight shots of Claire Foy’s face. And especially at these Dutch angles and it’s supposed to make you feel uneasy. It’s supposed to make you feel like you are you—there is something wrong. There’s something wrong with with with her and her character, something wrong with her mind, and that’s supposed to make you feel uneasy, anxious, and-and so this is a common trick used, especially in therapy sessions where you have a tight- a shot of somebody’s face and you’re just like, well, what’s the rest of their body doing? It’s just like you can see all the microchanges in-in somebody’s face, and this is where a real good actor can really separate themselves from just, you know, mediocre acting we’ll say, because if they know they’re going to be shot at this very tight, tight angle and close up that they have to actually feel the emotions in their face and they have to actually let those emotions change their microexpressions. Sort of on an-an implicit and unconscious level, and that’s how you find that that’s how you separate really good acting, in my opinion, is being able to detect those. Being able to detect those-those microexpressions and really, really get the sense that something is-something is wrong and we don’t know what is wrong on the face of it. Yeah, you start to think that OK, maybe her stalker isn’t real because there’s one exchange during her first night in this group home where she tries to get out and they think she’s being unruly and disruptive. And so she tries to leave and we see somebody who has the same face that she hallucinates come barging into the door an she gets accosted by this person and she punches him in the face, which I think is awesome. But it turns out it’s a different guy. It’s the guy who earlier went through her bag and put all their stuff into a plastic bag. She thinks it’s her stalker. We come to find out that her stalker is apparently at the working a job at the behavioral health center and it turns out that he’s playing a different guy. And he’s doing a really good job of pretending to be this other guy.

SAWYER: No. No way. You can’t be anywhere near me. This won’t work. The Boston cops have got a record of the restraining order. I hope following me all the way here was worth it, because you’re going to jail. George Shaw is that where you’re calling yourself? This man is called David Strine, and he’s been following me and calling me and texting me and showing up at my job and breaking into my fucking house. Take your meds and move on. No, I’m not going anywhere until the cops haul assassin to jail.

NURSE BOLES: George, did you do or say anything to provoke the patient? Stop calling him that. His name is David. He’s followed me all the way here from Boston.

“GEORGE”: I’ve never even been to Boston. I am a Sox fan.

SAWYER: F***ing liar. I want my phone. I saved all the text messages that you sent me. All the really, really sick ones. Remember David, all the ones where you said you kill yourself. You couldn’t have me.

VIOLET: Crazy.

“GEORGE”: Maybe I should go back to the other ward. Not doing any good here.

SAWYER: No one is f***ing buying this, Strine.

ALEX: And Claire Foy immediately recognizes him and she thinks, OK, maybe this is a hallucination and this stalker guy, played by Joshua Leonard, is real, so about halfway through the movie we find out that no, he’s actually real. He got a job there because he’s still stalking her, and she wasn’t hallucinating. Yes, but he wants to keep the rules going so the facility keeps her there involuntarily. You know, ignoring her pleas to leave. And he ends up giving her a hallucinogenic. I don’t know exactly what he gives her. It seems like it might be MDMA or or or some sort of PCP or whatever. I’m not entirely sure what he gives her in the evening medication line, but she ends up having a sort of out-of-body experience and the way Steven Soderbergh does—this was really good. So he basically puts a camera rig on her back and makes her walk around the one of the common rooms and so essentially what we’re seeing is the back of her head like moving back and forth very awkwardly, and then he adds in layers upon layers of that. So we sort of get these transparent images of her going back and forth, back and forth. And she’s just tripping out, trying-saying things that are incoherent and she has to get put into a—she has to get put into her bed and under restraints, and eventually she falls asleep and wakes up. And it’s like what happened or whatever, and Jay Pharaoh’s character comes over and tells her that, you know, she had a—she was tripping out and everything and—but he mentions that he believes her. So she gets ahold of her mom and tries to get her mom to come out here.

ALEX: And so here’s-here comes the the real psychopathological exploration in this movie. It’s not that Claire Foy’s character is pathological in the sense that she in the sense that she has schizophrenia or some other psychotic disorder. She does, I would say, have PTSD from being stalked and we learn the backstory about that sort of two-thirds into it. And she explains who the stalker is to Jay Pharaoh’s character. So she, I would say, that-that there’s a good exploration of violence against women, and even when there’s no actual sexual assault. But this does tie in to the kind of behavior that Kiersten Baughman and I a couple of episodes ago when we were talking about 50 Shades of Grey, that yeah, this kind of stalking behavior is relationship violence and this guy-this guy really reflects the amount of trauma that somebody could could face when being stalked by somebody who is that obsessed? Now this guy, again, played by Joshua Leonard, his name is David-David Strine. He’s got the real psychopathology in the film. He’s got obsessive-obsessive psychosis. He believes that the kindness that Sawyer gave to him when his father died, when they-when she was volunteering at a local old folks home. The kindness that she showed him, he misinterpreted as feelings and he just kind of latched on to her and just didn’t do not want to let go. And so he found out that she got committed to this place and ended up killing a dude taking his identity, acting as him, praying on the fact that she’s, you know, being misinterpreted, not listened to by the administrators and the doctors here because they’re running an insurance scheme. I mean it all-it all seems very, you know, run-of-the-mill thriller at this point. But yeah, he’s-he’s got an enormous obsession. And even when he gets her into the padded isolation room…

DAVID: Sawyer, we could be happy. We will, we will, we will. We will be happy.

SAWYER: You could never make me happy. Look at where we are David. Look at what you’ve done. There is no path to happiness from here. For either of us.

DAVID: Sawyer, I’ve seen you. Hey, I watched you at work. I’ve seen you with your friends. You’re not happy. You just float through life and nothing ever touches you. And you tried. You tried really hard to fit it. I’ve seen that, but-but you can’t. You can’t because there’s a piece missing.

SAWYER: And you’re what’s missing?

DAVID: Why not?

SAWYER: I f***ing hate you is why.

DAVID: I love you so much.

SAWYER: You don’t know he first thing about me.

DAVID: How can you say that? We spent months together?

SAWYER: No. You were in the same room while I talk to your father because you had nothing to say to him.

DAVID: You didn’t even know I was there.

SAWYER: Yeah, well, he was your father. And you couldn’t think of two words to say to him. You keep saying that you love me, but you’re not capable of loving anybody. Losing his mind was the best thing that could have happened to him. Think he was proud of you? How you turned out? What? What? Too mean? Not the girl you love? You don’t f***ing know me!

DAVID: I do.

SAWYER: Well then love me like this, David. Love me like this. Love me when I’m a bitch. Love me when I cheat. Love me when I shut down. Love all the s*** about me.

DAVID: It’s not you. That’s what trying to make yourself feel liken everybody else in the world has done to you.

SAWYER: You’re a f***ing simpleton. Do you know that? You are f***ing dunce. That sweet kind girl in your head. That’s not me. Can I ask you a question, David? Who did this to you? Who rejected you? Did she let you down easy? “I’m flattered, Dave, but I don’t want to ruin our friendship.” She ghost you? She blocked her number? She unfriend you on Facebook, vanished from your life or was it worse? She looked like she was gonna be sick. She laugh in your face? You tell all her friends? No? ‘Cause I’m telling you, David. That’s me! That’s what I would have done! That’s what I did! That’s who you love? That’s who you f***ing dream of! That’s who you’ve been stalking for the past two years. Am I everything you hoped I’d be, David!? Is this what you imagine when you dream of us living in your f***ing cabin? Two years, David. What a waste. You could have met someone else in that time. You know, people are pretty pathetic. Child killers get visits from women who see the good and then someone who loves a child killer might be able to see some good in you because no one else walking could. No one else could David.

ALEX: She just calls him the worst names and that he’s pathetic and worthless and he’s just, “I know you don’t-I know you don’t believe that.” And all of these very, very creepy phrasing and-and-and-and other things, and you just think to yourself, “Oh my goodness, how’s this guy getting away-away with this?” And he’s just a-he’s just a smooth talker. He was able to do this kind of stuff by, you know, just being a believable white dude, is really what I want to-really want to say and he just wants to have this woman with him, and she’s just like no, I don’t want to and, you know, spoiler alert here she does-she does eventually get-get the one up on him and eventually-and eventually kills him, but, you know, that trauma is not going to go away super quick. She’s able to get past all of the trauma at this place, but she’s not going to be able to get past this this trauma without, you know, actual really deep therapy, because even at the end scene, she thinks that a guy at the restaurant she’s at is this person. She thought she murdered and to get away from him—she doesn’t murder him, you know, just for funsies. But she murders him because he’s trying to murder—she try and—she basically—he basically murdered her mom. I called that right at the beginning, like as soon as this guy comes to the mother’s hotel room, which is like, “Oh my God, yeah, she’s dead.” We find that out as well, and so she thinks this guy in the restaurant is her stalker. And then she has a-a moment of just utter despair and-and leaves the restaurant quickly. And then the last still of the movie is her looking back and it’s just like, “OK, this is what stalking behavior does to women.” This is sexual violence even without the act of sex involved. This is violence and it affects a lot of women. Stalking in general affects a lot of women and the trauma of being being watched, either actively being watched or thinking that you’re being watched, is traumatic. It’s bad. Uh, you know, apologies for the lack of eloquence here, but you kind of it kind of feels like somewhat, for a person watching on the outside, it kind of feels like the person is maybe, you know, breaking with reality, which I can-I can understand the initial reach out for help that this clinic gives, but honestly, that turns into something much greater. And I think this is where the story sort of breaks down. The story kind of breaks down when you apply the regular run-of-the-mill thriller tropes to this, the stalker thriller tropes. I think the far more compelling part of the movie is the beginning. And like I said, the cinematography, the sort of guessing that you’re left with. Unfortunately, it’s sort of goes down into the mediocre part of storytelling and in sort of the last half/last third of the movie.

ALEX: So takeaways from the movie that I would use in teaching here would be relationship violence. And stalking behaviors, as well as a obsessive psychosis. So psychosis mixed with the illusion that somebody has feelings with feelings for you and so you go to the to any lengths to get that perfect-get that perfect idyllic life with a partner that you think is willing but on-on-in reality, is-is definitely not willing, of course, not willing at all. And so that’s what I would explore, first and foremost. The second bit, even though I talked about it first. The second thing that I would talk about is, you know, how mental health is still characterized and approached in this country and just-just the small aspect of it that is rooted in this, we’ll say, cynicism. Where there are organizations, behavioral health organizations, that are only out-only out there to milk you out of your insurance money and then as soon as your insurance won’t pay anymore, they put you out on the street. John Oliver had a really interesting main story about this on Last Week Tonight a couple of years ago, and I think he’s done a couple of times with respect to the opioid crisis, but then in just behavioral health in general, and the rehab clinics that are out in like Arizona or Malibu, CA that sort of play up this whole like, “hey come stay with us and you can get your behavioral-your addiction squared away at this lovely facility,” and that, you know, they go all out in advertising. But generally speaking, you’re there for 30 days and you get barely any training. You get barely any counseling. And essentially—like, now we’re going to take away your phone and all those good things that we told you about. Nah., we can’t get to them today. Sorry, we were not going to take a field trip or we’re not going to do this really fun thing. And yeah, you can enjoy the pool, but you know, the pool doesn’t really get cleaned like it should and it’s just like, super bait-and-switch, such sort of situation, and that’s what I think that first part of the movie is, is first part of Unsane is playing on. Is this idea of these clinics that are for profit even though they sort of represent themselves as nonprofit. But really, what they’re trying to do is milk your insurance company for all it’s worth when you seemingly have some sort of problem that would require maybe perhaps being institutionalized, for I don’t know., a week to 30 days, so on and so forth. So, I mean those two aspects I would play with as far as using this as a teaching tool. Like I said, it was an enjoyable movie, even though it does become kind of tropey toward the end. It was an enjoyable movie, mainly for its cinematography. I wish I could like clip together movies that maybe have basic psychopathology aspects to them, but they use the camera really well to sort of throw the viewer off the scent, so to speak, to mess with-mess with lighting, to mess with tightness of shots. And like I said, the Dutch angles that that in and of itself, if I were to use— if I were to describe how to make somebody as uneasy as the main character in a movie. It would be these cinematography techniques, and these directorial techniques. And that’s the, I would say, that’s the takeaway from this movie. I mean, there are plenty of movies about stalkers, of course, and there are plenty of movies about actual schizophrenia. But this one, this one I think does a good job of blending sort of the real world aspect of American healthcare and American mental healthcare with a bait-and-switch kind of psych thriller. Is she-is she mentally unwell? Is she not mentally unwell? You know, what’s the trauma? Oh, it’s this other guy that’s mentally unwell. OK, I get it. So that’s the sort of-that’s the sort of idea that this film carries with it, I don’t know. Like I said, it’s-it’s—if you want a movie that makes you super angry for all sorts of healthcare reasons like, “Oh my God, that’s not how you treat patients, so that’s not how you treat human beings. Oh my God, they’re just giving the medication and not telling them what they are. Oh my God, that doctor is really awful. Oh my God that administrator is like the worst person in the world, so and so and so. Oh my God, that stalker is the absolute worst.” We really feel for you, Sawyer, we really feel for you. Claire Foy. She does a great job in this movie and that-and that’s all you can ask for in one of these kinds of, I guess I’ll call it an, indie movie… so yeah.

ALEX: And that folks is Unsane. Those are my thoughts on Unsane. Again, you can catch it on Prime if you are watching—”watching”—if you’re listening to this recently, it’s probably going to be on Prime for awhile. Amazon Prime, but if not, try to catch it somewhere else. Came out in 2018 so it should be easy to find somewhere else, if not on prime. Do remember to catch us on Facebook, Twitter, all the places. I guess those are the two places. Thank you again to the Society for the Teaching of Psychology for granting our little podcast here some love for the next year as we look at expanding this audience. Please do share this. This podcast-podcast episode, the pod and your favorite episode with somebody as the midroll said, you know, five of your friends. We’re trying to grow the audience and the idea here is to get to a point where again, like I said, in my mid-career life, I am considered that film and psych guy. That’s the goal. Thank you for listening to this fairly disjointed episode, solo episode. I don’t know how well these solo episodes do compared to the ones with guest hosts. But I appreciate you listening to this point of the episode and in any case, until the next one, thanks for listening.