This thriller/urban horror film clearly has social commentary aspirations, but any potential message is clumsily delivered, and even Russell Crowe’s intimidating larger-than-life performance is not enough to save the film from its poor script.

Premise: When single mum Rachel (Caren Pistorius) succumbs to road-rage on her way to drop her 15-year-old son off at school, her refusal to apologise incurs the wrath of Tom (Russell Crowe). Little does Rachel know that Tom is a dangerously unstable man who has just murdered his ex-wife and her boyfriend in cold blood, and who now feels compelled to teach Rachel a lesson about civility.

Review:

I don’t think the title sequence of Unhinged does the film any favours, as it sets up the movie as having something “profound” to say about the increased violence and aggression in modern society. If instead, the film had leaned into its over-the-top tone and B-movie concept more, it might have been a bit more fun – but throughout the film (and particularly in the opening and closing sequences) it acts like it’s a thought-provoking insight into the breakdown of civilised society, when in fact it’s just a fairly two-dimensional thriller. The heavy-handed and clumsy treatment of its “subtext” gives the film an amateurish, film-student feel in a number of places.

Part of the reason why the “social commentary” elements don’t work is because the characters themselves are so thinly developed. Russell Crowe certainly makes an impression as the unstable and vindictive Tom, and he gives a very physically intimidating performance, but when all is said and done, Tom is a “bogeyman” archetype rather than a realistic, rounded character. There are some attempts made to flesh out his motivation (he’s a toxic Old White Man who feels marginalised and ignored by society following a painful divorce), and there’s the implication that he has underlying mental health issues, but ultimately he’s just a variation on the “deranged killer” trope, and there’s never any truly satisfying explanation given for why Tom goes to such violent extremes to “teach a lesson” to Rachel, a perfect stranger.

“…its insistence that it’s meant to be taken seriously highlights how ridiculous everything is…”

None of this would be a problem if the film embraced the B-movie-ness of its premise, but its insistence that it’s meant to be taken seriously just serves to highlight how ridiculous everything is. The film’s portrayal of its heroine, Rachel (Caren Pistorius), is also odd, as she is the one who instigates the road-rage incident that sets everything off, and yet the film arguably doesn’t do enough to make her character sympathetic during the run up to that incident, so that the audience can “forgive” her error in judgment. Instead, the audience is left with the feeling that while Tom’s actions are unquestionably horrific and totally unjustifiable, if Rachel had not unnecessarily antagonised him, then none of the other people in the film would have been made to suffer.

And suffer they do, because Unhinged is not a film that pulls any punches. It comes with a high body count, and some of the violence is genuinely pretty gruesome and realistic. But another of the issues that I had with the film is the speed at which the violence escalates; if you think about most psychological thrillers built around the premise of a “mentally unstable” antagonist/antihero (everything from 1987’s Fatal Attraction, to 2014’s Nightcrawler and even 2019’s Joker), there’s always a slow burn that builds up the tension before it erupts into violence. But in Unhinged (and even ignoring the fact the Russell Crowe’s Tom murders his e-wife and her boyfriend in the opening scene), Tom goes from zero-to-sixty within a couple of scenes of meeting Rachel, meaning that there’s no real sense of build up or escalation before the bodies start to pile up.

“…the end result was very formulaic…”

And the brutality of the violence also seems at odds with the stupidity of the script – for example, at one point Rachel (whose primary objective until then had, understandably, been to protect her son from Tom) inexplicably puts her son in harm’s way, when he was already effectively safe. Equally, Tom seems absolutely comfortable killing completely innocent people to “teach a lesson” to Rachel, but it’s not entirely clear what that lesson is meant to be, and surely it would have made more sense for him to simply kill her for being rude in the first place?

Overall, I could have probably gone along with Unhinged as a throwback, exploitation-style B-movie, if it didn’t keep insisting on taking itself quite so seriously. For me, the end result was just very formulaic, and worse still, dull. Although, I do have to admit, the film does have a very cool kiss-off line at the end. But if you’re looking for a good road-rage themed thriller, I’d recommend you revisit 2002’s excellent Changing Lanes, with Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Affleck, instead.