Unhinged (2020)

I'm not sure I can say Unhinged is a good movie. It is filled with cliched story arcs and plays up the worst impulses for thrills. Yet despite what I know watching it I couldn't help but feel my heart race, my pulse pound. I was once pursued by a stranger in a car during a road rage incident. It was terrifying. And despite how many times the film felt like it was cheating, it still brought back a lot of that real life terror I felt.

Pistorius does a great job of making her character feel real even in the film's rather preposterous scenarios. Her emotions and the ride she goes on are very well played out. There were times I felt she transcended the movie and the situations it puts her in.

Crowe is put in the hard position of taking his villain character and not taking him as over the top as he is written. He manages this as best he can. His character is the film's main problem. He is unredeemable. He starts the film as a brutal killer and decides that being publicly slighted by a stranger is enough to justify further violence. The film doesn't give him more motivation than just straight white male rage. Crowe embodies that.

And to be honest he is terrifying. He is unrepentant. He is entitled. His beef is that he is disrespected and his belief is that entitles him to rampage, to cause harm. Pistorius explains to him that she has nothing to apologize for and he rejects that outright. No matter where the film falls down in its simplistic, unrealistic story telling, this is where it finds truth.

Unhinged in its attempt to be a scary thriller manages to find a piece of honestly scary reality in the way it shows white male rage as being a real threat to the safety and security of the rest of us. In that it works. It does touch a nerve. I still imagine how much better a movie it could have been if it did this without all the games it plays with story and character.

Unhinged
Starring: Russel Crowe, Caren Pistorius, Gabriel Bateman, Jimmi Simpson
Director: Derrick Borte
Writer: Carl Ellsworth