Unhealthy relationships are not a matter to be taken lightly. Surely enough, everyone has had that one bad breakup or that one ex that they cannot be in the same room with, but what happens when the situation is taken farther than that? Stalking is defined as “Criminal activity consisting of the repeated following and harassing of another person.” I posted on Twitter asking for personal experiences with stalkers, and the stories I received are overwhelming and all too familiar. What happens after the stalker is convicted? Today, I am here to discuss the psychological damage that stalking causes as seen in the recent release Unsane (2018).
The term “stalker” is typically used lightly, or in jest, when, in reality, It is a nightmare for too many people. Fifteen percent of women and six percent of men report to have been a victim of stalking. I am one of those fifteen percent. My high school beau turned into a case number a few years after I graduated and separated from him. We broke up when, searching for the remote control, I found a bedside drawer with a jar of bobby pins, earrings, buttons, and strands of my hair. I held it up to my boyfriend of almost 3 years and asked “Ron, what is this?” He snatched the jar out of my hand and didn’t respond.
My first semester of college was spent being followed on campus. The toxicity escalated and I left him, only to find him two years later, standing in the doorway to my bedroom with a knife.
There are no words for the feelings experienced after being stalked. My sense of safety was gone. Every person that looked like Ron sent me into a panic attack. I made laps around my apartment, double and triple checking all of the locks on the doors and windows, making sure the curtains were closed, that my knife was hidden under my mattress where I could reach over and grab it in a moment’s notice.
“Changing your email and phone number becomes normal,” Sawyer says.
That statement is all too real. In Unsane, Sawyer Valentini is a quiet businesswoman who has moved to Pennsylvania from Boston to get away from her stalker, David. The first symptom she exhibits is sexual dysfunction when she goes on a date with a man from a dating website. She becomes overwhelmed and likely triggered, unable to perform sexually and throws herself to the ground, sobbing and apologizing. This is two common after-effects of stalking in one scene: dysfunction in her sexual and emotional life and how she partially blames herself for the things that have happened to her. Portraying these two symptoms says a lot about Sawyer and what she has been through – she is lacking trust, and that becomes very obvious in this scene.
Coming along with self-blame is the idea that maybe the person being stalked is overreacting to the situation. Many times when I was in public and I would spot Ron or his vehicle, I was met with a lot of doubt. “It’s probably just a coincidence,” my friends would say. I began to blame myself for my own paranoia and also for the things that were happening to me. In apologizing when she breaks down during her hook up, she shows that she still harbors that sense of self blame, as if anything she had previously done could have caused these experiences to happen to her.
Another very common effect of stalking on mental health is suicidal ideation. This is more of an extension of the sense of self-blame. Sawyer expresses to her psychiatrist that she sometimes considers suicide, and this conversation is what places her in Highland Creek. The depression and other emotions that lead Sawyer to express these feelings are very common with victims of stalking. In my own personal experience, people do not attempt suicide to end their life. They attempt suicide to make the things in their life that are out of their control end, because there is no other route in sight. While the hospitalization at Highland Creek is, indeed, an insurance scam, it does show that she has a level of suicidal ideation, probably because she just wants the anxiety and the paranoia to end. This is also the cause to her irritability and overt aggression, as she is more than likely not getting enough sleep due to these feelings. All of her actions and smaller, more subtle symptoms, come back to her past experiences and could also be considered PTSD.
Sawyer’s emotions are amplified when she realizes that her stalker, David, has been employed by Highland Creek under a different name. When she addresses this, she is ignored. The fact that Sawyer’s concerns are ignored (despite the fact that her hospitalization is part of an insurance scam and not due to her symptoms) is a huge addition to the paranoia and helplessness that a victim of stalking experiences. Each event that brings this film forward exacerbates the symptoms that she already has, which is a very important tool used by director Stephen Soderbergh.
Typically, when a psychological disorder is used in a film (particularly a horror film), there is no back story to the character to explain where these problems came from. In the case of Unsane, the lack of a back story is preferable. Everyone knows what stalking is and has seen it in the media – the audience does not need a lengthy back story, and that is why Soderbergh provides a very short history halfway through the movie. The audience receives an explanation as to how David and Sawyer met, how the stalking escalated, and that’s it. Sometimes, the rules are meant to be broken. In this case, breaking the rules and providing little explanation for the majority of the film works. It holds the mystery of “is she, or isn’t she insane? Is this all in her head?” Capturing that mystery is ninety percent of the battle.
 to examine how it explores the self blame victims of stalking may feel.){kind=link}