This poster for Unsane

I’m recording a podcast tonight on Unsane, at which point I can finally hear what some other people think of it.

That has been a protracted experience, because first I didn’t want to hear anything about it prior to seeing it, which led me to skip their coverage of it on Filmspotting. Then I didn’t want to hear anything about it prior to reviewing it, so I bypassed that episode of Filmspotting on my way in to work the next day, before I’d written my review. Then I didn’t want to hear anything about it before podcasting about it, lest I inadvertently adopt another’s viewpoint on it, as would have also happened if I’d listened to it before reviewing it. Tomorrow morning, maybe I’ll finally get to listen to that episode.

But I did want to say that you’ll have multiple ways to hear me talk about it once the podcast is released, as there is already a link to my review on the right.

And since those multiple ways will exist, all I wanted to say in this post is: I love that poster.

For some reason I didn’t notice it before now, but walking back from lunch today, when I saw it on the marquee for the theater in the basement of the building where I now work (moved office locations about three weeks ago), I was immediately enthralled by it.

There’s not a lot new you can do to really explore the themes of a film in its poster art, as there have been approximately 1.7 million movie posters and they’ve thought of pretty much everything there is to think of. This one does something slightly new, and new enough to really be captivating. I mean yeah – when you’re feeling a little unsane, it’s like your face being dislocated from the rest of your head and being moved six inches to the left. With a single-world encapsulation of how you feel – UNSANE – shoving it aside.

Plus Claire Foy is awesome in this movie, so I just like looking at her face to be reminded of that.

Unfortunately, the world will probably not care how many different ways I will finally have of giving you my impression of this film, as it has pretty much tanked. The U.S. box office of $7.7 million is actually better than I thought it was, but it’s still nowhere near great for a director with the stature of Steven Soderbergh. And it’s $20 million less than Logan Lucky, which was also considered quite the failure (though may have had more traditionally box office friendly stars, like Channing Tatum, Adam Driver and Daniel Craig). Going only on circumstantial evidence, I was the only one in the theater when I saw it on Thursday, which was only the second night of its release.

Pretty great poster though.