Review Tuesday: Unhinged (2020)

 

Unhinged

A woman learns what a bad day really is. 

My wife selected another movie about a mentally unstable man having his way with an unwitting victim. This time, it's a young and attractive soon-to-be single mom being tormented by a lunatic. 

 

This lunatic referred to as THE MAN, played by Russel Crowe, had just lost everything in a divorce, so why not go the full distance? The flick starts with him brutally murdering his family and burning the house down. Meanwhile, young and beautiful, Rachel (Caren Pistorius) is under pressure while going her own troubles, like going through her own divorce, losing her job, and trying to be a mom. While driving her son to school she honked teh wrong way at THE MAN who seemed to be asleep at the wheel. Naturally, he takes it the wrong way and mayhem ensues. 

While the acting is very good and the film is nicely polished, there were just too many ridiculous things going on. Probably the most important WTF situation to consider would be the gas station scene. Rachel fuels up her car, then goes in to get something to drink, some lottery tickets, and pay. When she turns around, THE MAN is parked directly behind her. Okay, that's possible, I suppose. I mean, in a big city it MIGHT be possible that he might find a red Volvo wagon at a random gas station. However, you later find out all the things he did inside her car while she was in the station: he stole her iPhone, found that it was unlocked, found her iPad that was in her bags ad happened to be connected to her phone account and TAPED the tablet under her seat so he could track her. From that one scene alone started losing interest. Even if someone were prepared to do that sort of thing, they wouldn't have the time to get all that done without getting caught by Rachel in the process. Not to mention that there were SO MANY opportunities for Rachel to get the Police involved and get out of the situation. 

This seemed like a fairly well-made made for TV movie that was meant to be a cautionary tale to avoid people with short tempers. It was somewhat entertaining, but the plot holes ended up bothering me too much. It would call this movie mediocre to not-great. 

 

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