10 Movies That Tried To Change Cinema Forever (And Failed)

7. Unsane Tried To Kickstart The iPhone Movie Revolution

Steven Soderbergh's general dissatisfaction with the costly, time-consuming nature of big-budget studio films led him to experiment with lower-budget methods of filmmaking, and to test whether or not a cinema-worthy movie could be shot on a couple of iPhones.

The result was last year's Unsane, a Claire Foy-starring psychological horror film which, despite being shot in just 10 days with no professional filmmaking equipment and on a mere $1.5 million budget, was released in more than 2,000 cinemas in North America.

And though Unsane certainly touts a lower visual fidelity than a conventionally assembled film, it is nevertheless a ruthlessly efficient piece of genre entertainment, confirming Soderbergh's shrewd skill no matter the delivery system, and also Foy's terrific acting chops.

But despite grossing almost ten-fold its budget worldwide, Unsane was deemed a financial failure due to the costs of marketing a film with such a wide release, and Soderbergh's experiment was effectively a business failure.

After all, if one of the most acclaimed directors on the planet couldn't make this work, what hope would a no-name filmmaker shooting their own iPhone film possibly have?

In an era where audiences are generally only turning up en masse for blockbuster event films, iPhone movies are much better-suited for streaming services, which likely explains why Soderberg's latest iPhone film, High Flying Bird, went direct to Netflix.

But his dabbling in this field hasn't sparked the revolution he might've been hoping for, as iPhone-shot films are still enormous rarities in even indie filmmaking circles.