Unsane

"Films shot by established directors, on shoestring budgets using cheap equipment, tend to be equal parts inspirational and deceiving. If the greatest determining factor of a movie's quality was the size of its budget, Hollywood studios would be pumping out new masterpieces every week. The most important thing is, was, will always be expertise. Richard Linklater's filmed theatre drama Tape, shot on high definition video in 2001, cost a paltry sum. But how do you put a price on the experience the cast and crew brought to it?"

"We're in schlock corridor here and Soderbergh runs with it, cellphone in hand; under the buzzing suspense mechanics, however, a cautionary note on the perils of disbelieving women is just audible."

"Made on a budget of only $1.2 million, it is technologically startling, classically composed, with rich still frames, wide shots and close-ups, more formally precise than many big-budget studio efforts."

"It's rough, to say the least, and that's not just a matter of hasty visuals: the whole thing feels provisional and half-hearted, like a scrunched-up charcoal sketch."

"The film has a ragbag of themes including stalking, mental illness and the private medical insurance racket; these competing ideas cancel each other out and aren't scary."

"Returning to the knowing twistiness of his 2012 thriller Side Effects, Soderbergh makes Unsane work teasingly, until things edge too far into the realms of the Gothicly lurid to be remotely plausible."

"... Steven Soderbergh's genre movie, filmed using the camera on a fruity smartphone, which after a promising beginning is too demented for its own good."

"The hack screenplay by Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer gives the game away far too early, squandering the main thing the movie has going for it."

"Opens with a bloody big bang, it finishes with a sad fizzle and – though enjoyable – leaves you with a tiny twinge of disappointment."