Any movie released from March of 2020 onward was doomed to fail due to the pandemic, but in another parallel reality, director Derrick Borte’s intentionally ridiculous chase thriller Unhinged would have become an instant cult favorite and sleeper hit.
Unfortunately, the old-fashioned throwback had the misfortune of securing a wide theatrical rollout in August 2020, a period where the industry was facing its worst downturn in decades. However, it still managed to carve out a unique piece of Hollywood history by becoming the first COVID-era title to score an opening weekend of over $1 million, which it accomplished four times over.
The trailer largely sold itself, with the glorified B-movie living up to its title and then some based entirely on Russell Crowe’s wild-eyed and scenery-devouring performance as the villain of the piece, with the Academy Award winner playing a rage-fueled driver who makes it his mission to track down and decimate the unwitting single mother who does little more than beep her horn at him.
Unhinged is a solid way of spending a couple of hours on a lazy weekend or quiet afternoon, which must be one of the reasons why it’s suddenly experienced an uptick in popularity on streaming. Per FlixPatrol, the straight-faced but deliberately preposterous cat-and-mouse tale of vengeance has put the pedal to the metal to end up as one of the most-watched features on the global charts of both Prime Video and iTunes.
All that, and it even etched its name into the history books during the darkest time multiplexes have known in the modern era.
Published: Mar 27, 2023 01:50 am