I told Dorothée why Greta wouldn’t work, and I was right. But we saw it anyway, and what made me right also made the audience giggle. Female Stalker movies …

… and all stalker films, work on the principle of plausibility. Not all films do (Star Wars, Super Hero Wears Pants, etc.). But first act turn – after The Discovery – is not unlike Invasion of Body Snatchers, i.e. ‘No one in authority will believe me!’. Equally idiotic in Crazytown, USA (much better title for Unsane), if we don’t believe that the character could actually be in jeopardy via what we know about the real world, we don’t care.

Plausibility is the cat and mouse game between the ant- and protagonist: what is the line they can – and cannot – cross. Obviously the dog is going to die, so fuck this movie, but it’s the other steps, possibly made in grand error by Mr. Neil Jordan’s lack of familiarity with the genre, the New York statutes…

…and every Law & Order: SVU ever made. This is a specific reference because New York has some of the strongest anti-stalking laws in the country… since 1999.

So when you have the cop say, as one inevitably does in these things:

And to some extent, sadly, that dialog would have worked. You could have the film and Mme. Isabelle Huppert game the laws or gaslight Ms. Chloë Grace Moretz, because we actually know that these laws aren’t always enforced. But instead of being clever, Mme. Huppert simply goes through the obvious motions of being all transgressive, so that the audience can, well, as it happens, giggle.

Because there is that Godzilla moment (also seen in Inferno), where you just let the film happen. By the ending, technically by the middle, when Mme. Huppert starts throwing shit on the floor of Ms. Grace Moretz ‘s restaurant everyone was tittering, no doubt imagining as I did a late-80s remake starring Divine and Mr. Johnny Depp. The whole, very small but enthusiastic audience, including the business semi-formal group of women in the front row, dodging work for this!, starting laughing along with the film. This was no doubt because we were all high on nachos.

What’s that now? Well, you see, this experience was greatly aided by its viewing at The Violet Crown, which serves snacks, complete with tables, comfy chairs, etc. And yes, I’m aware, Dorothée and I went to SXSW, and all we got was this lousy ticket

In this case, I can happily report that the snacks in question were truffle fries.

and not one for a film at the festival. Except for mine, of course.

Mine. Aww. The writer thinks it’s his film.

So Mr. Jordan, this is not the venue you would want to screen any film that verges, then teeters, then tumbles down the cliff, then drowns, then re-emerges from the sea of camp as some kind of Identical Amnesiac Twin from the Sirk Lagoon.

On the other hand, maybe it is. Because when this wet creature walks out of the loch covered in a thin film of hysterical revelations, dead mothers and nasty restaurant managers, the movie achieves what a good one might; the cheap scares and forced piano lessons and the mysterious figure turning out to be the roommate because there’s no other character in the film saving Ms. Grace Moretz at the end is … fun.