Unhinged (2020) - Movie Review

A B-movie thriller all about how little of an excuse some people need to completely go off the deep end and hurt others. Not sure who exactly thought this was the ideal feature to bring out in the middle of epidemic lockdown, a time when the distinction between selfishness and actually giving a fuck about other people is getting sharper by the day, but… have to admit, I’m a bit torn on whether this was the best idea or the worst idea in cinemas right now.

For a start, as a thriller on its own, this certainly gets the job done. A lot of the more visceral moments take place on the road, with road rage specifically taking a focal point in the narrative, and the levels of putting the ‘car’ in ‘carnage’ are quite insane to watch on the big screen. It’s hard, it’s nasty, it’s more than a little bloody, and at the hands of a rather pudgy Russell Crowe in full B-movie villain mode, it’s properly unnerving stuff.

I’ve seen quite a few comparisons made between this and Falling Down, which to a degree I get. This carries the same give-no-fuck trashiness that made Joel Schumacher’s darker work so much goddamn fun, and there’s something to be said about how this is arguably also the story of a man who loses his shit after a bad day… but this isn’t so much comparable as it is the even darker side of that same coin.

I maintain that Falling Down is a genuinely great film, and part of that is down to the attempts to make the audience empathise with its lead D-Fens. The family problems, the feeling of abandonment by the government he once served, the fact that the only life he takes with real intention ends up being his own; between the writing and Douglas’ performance, I felt that shit.

And admittedly, I feel this shit too, but for entirely different reasons. Crowe’s ‘The Man’ (yep, they went full Hush with the naming here) isn’t empathetic. He’s not even sympathetic. The film opens on him murdering his ex-wife and her new partner, and then goes on to display basically every red flag of a spousal abuser. As he stalks and terrorises Caren Pistorius’ Rachel, he keeps insisting that he’s teaching her a lesson, showing her what a ‘real’ bad day looks like, and constantly saying that every action he takes is her fault.

On its own, this is pretty terrifying stuff, making for the kind of depiction of toxic masculinity that works for the same reason The Invisible Man did… except part of the scattershot trashiness of the tone results in more than a bit of muddling with that message. It’s sandwiched between the information overload in the opening credits, covering everything from highway traffic rage to lessened police numbers in order to set up someone losing it this hard, and a final note that ends up implying that Rachel might still be at fault after all for provoking The Man. Fucking yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes, dude.

However… dammit, even with that said, that’s not even the only notion I got from all this, and it goes back to the focus on road rage that stays firmly at the film’s centre. While the aforementioned implication still comes through, however unintentional it might have ultimately been, what comes through just a little bit more is the idea of not feeding into the rage machine. Not engaging with it. Not giving the kind of fiery frustration that goes into basically every driving encounter room to breathe. (Seriously, every driver thinks they’re in the right on the road, regardless of the situation)

This admittedly does lead into that ‘blame the victim’ crap from before, which is an aspect of toxic masculinity that I really despise; it makes us all look like mindless animals who don’t know any better and who have no self-control, nor should we be expected to, which does everyone a disservice in the process. But even considering that, as a pacifist and a staunch advocate for de-escalation over aggression… part of me still sees a good point in the notion of not playing the road rage game. It’s part of the reason why I don’t drive… that, and it spares my ADHD-ridden arse from being one brain-fart away from injuring someone else on the road.

That’s the problem with smaller-scale B-movies like this that try and stretch for something bigger; balancing hard and dirty thrills with genuinely thoughtful ideas is a tricky act to pull off, and I would argue that director Derrick Borte and writer Carl Ellsworth end up fumbling with it. I mean, it’s still a pretty damn tense ride and the performances work well to keep things engaging, but scratching its surface reveals… well, not exactly maliciousness, but a certain carelessness that muddies up the brains behind the brawn.