Some horror films move so slowly that you begin to wonder whether they’re actually building atmosphere or simply running out the clock. Unhinged spends so much time watching people sit around talking that I started to suspect the killer wasn’t murdering anyone because he had died of boredom off screen.
Yet despite a pace that would make continental drift seem energetic, the film somehow develops a genuinely eerie atmosphere. It’s one of those strange little early slashers that’s often more interesting than it is actually good.
The plot follows three friends travelling through rural Oregon when a violent storm causes them to crash their car. Injured and stranded in the middle of nowhere, they eventually find shelter at a large isolated house occupied by an elderly woman and her daughter. At first, the arrangement seems straightforward enough. The women offer food, a place to stay, and help recovering from the accident. But it quickly becomes apparent that something is very wrong in this house.
The mother spends most of her time rambling about her dead husband and acting like she’s wandered in from a Tennessee Williams play after a head injury. The daughter seems permanently trapped somewhere between shy, nervous, and quietly disturbed. Meanwhile, somebody is lurking around outside the property watching the women, breathing heavily, and generally behaving like a sex offender who’s misplaced his confidence.
As the stranded friends settle into the house, tensions begin to mount. The women start uncovering hints about the family living there, and the increasingly unsettling atmosphere eventually gives way to murder.
About 80% of Unhinged consists of characters sitting around having long, meandering discussions that don’t really go anywhere. The other 10% is largely made up of the girls hearing their unseen stalker lurking outside and making noises that suggest he’s either plotting murder or has discovered a hidden cache of Razzle magazines in the bushes. The remaining 10% is the actual slasher movie.
So, yes, the biggest issue is the pacing. For a film that barely scrapes past eighty minutes, it somehow feels like it runs for the length of Lawrence of Arabia. I’m convinced I aged slightly watching it. If you’re expecting the relentless body-count energy of Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street, you’re probably going to end up checking how much runtime is left every fifteen minutes.
Yet despite all that, there’s something oddly compelling about it. Part of that comes down to the atmosphere. A lot of slashers from this period rely almost entirely on the kills. Unhinged doesn’t really have enough of them for that. Instead, it leans heavily into a sense of unease.
The isolated house feels genuinely uncomfortable, the surrounding countryside creates a strong feeling of isolation, and there’s a constant sense that something is wrong even when very little is actually happening. The whole film feels slightly detached from reality.
Not in an Italian horror sort of way where logic simply packs its bags and fucks off halfway through the movie. More in the sense that everyone seems trapped inside some strange dream where normal human behaviour has been outlawed.
The performances help with that as well. Nobody’s exactly giving an Oscar-winning turn, but the cast generally understand the assignment. The women running the house in particular do most of the heavy lifting. They never come across as obvious horror villains. Instead they have the sort of polite-but-off energy that makes you immediately check whether your drink has been tampered with.
The combination of odd performances, strange dialogue, and the film’s generally off-kilter atmosphere creates a constant feeling that something horrible is about to happen.Admittedly, sometimes what happens is another ten-minute conversation. But when the violence finally arrives, it tends to make an impression.
Unhinged is never especially graphic by modern standards, but there’s some surprisingly decent gore scattered throughout. The effects are simple but effective, and the film occasionally delivers moments of brutality that catch you off guard precisely because the rest of the movie moves at such a slow pace.
It understands something a lot of later slashers forgot. A kill actually means something when you’ve spent time building up to it. Admittedly, Unhinged perhaps spends a little too much time building up to it. There’s a middle ground somewhere between this and something like Halloween Kills.
What really elevates Unhinged above many of its forgotten contemporaries, however, is the ending. One thing that’s often overlooked about early slashers is how fond they were of twist endings.
Before the genre became rigidly formulaic, filmmakers seemed obsessed with throwing one final curveball at the audience. Sometimes they worked. Sometimes they were complete nonsense. Sometimes they felt like the writers had painted themselves into a corner and simply started pulling ideas from a hat.
Thankfully, Unhinged lands on the right side of that divide. I won’t spoil it here, but the reveal genuinely recontextualises much of what came before and leads directly into the film’s nastiest and most brutal kill. It’s the sort of ending that sticks in your head long after you’ve forgotten most of the middle section.
Which is probably the story of Unhinged as a whole. It’s slow. It drags. It never reaches the heights of the best slashers from the era. But it’s got atmosphere, a genuinely memorable twist, some decent gore, and enough oddball charm to make it worth a look for slasher fans.
Even if the film spends most of its runtime alternating between pointless conversations and a stalker sounding like he’s having an enthusiastic wank in the shrubbery.
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