Unsane: The Committed Cut

As noted above, the theatrical edit of Unsane has a solid B-movie core and premise, and the central performances are strong. However, it's let down by a script that does not trust its audience. The problems are twofold. Firstly, at several points throughout the film there are very obvious and unsubtle indications dropped about what is actually going on. While these are likely intended to ensure that the viewer is sympathetic to Sawyer (who has been introduced as a fairly abrasive and spiky character), the result is that they consistently mean the audience has information Sawyer does not have, but the story is not structured in such a way as to use this imbalance effectively. Secondly, the antagonist is clearly established as being a stalker - but during the course of the film he is depicted as almost casually escalating from stalking to multiple murders and sadistic assaults, with no explanation beyond "Well, he's a wrong 'un". It smacks of lazy thriller tropes, particularly because there's no finesse to any of the execution. What's worse is that when these crimes start taking place on the grounds of Highland Creek, it places an additional burden of credulity on the central fraudulent-committment-for-profit premise - because while it is plausible that hiring unmotivated and under-qualified staff might create an environment where there is little concern for patient wellbeing, it is not a given that said environment would extend to not having any concerns over an unexplained patient death on the grounds, or the sudden disappearance of another patient who had been a source of concern (and therefore potential profit). Both of these issues can be mitigated quite successfully by adopting a "less is more" narrative approach, primarily by reducing as much as possible the number of scenes that do not involve Sawyer once she has been committed. It was not possible to remove all such scenes without introducing potential plot holes, but I have reduced the non-Sawyer scenes to the minimum required for a coherent plot throughline. Other elements such as shots showing George/David watching Sawyer were removed wherever possible, as we do not see any other staff doing this nor any indication that it is normal behaviour. In addition to this excision of material, the Matt Damon cameo scene has been moved to the start of the film and serves as a cold open - this establishes unambiguously that Sawyer has been a victim of stalking, such that the context around her PTSD episode when she takes Mark home from the bar is changed from "What was that about?" to "So that's how badly she is still affected by this". This helps underscore the severity of her condition when she goes to Highland Creek. Some minor brightness & contrast changes have also been made for the pre-committment scenes, in order to emphasise the difference in Sawyer's surroundings before and after she is committed,