I See You

Your home is your castle. I love that saying. The place where you feel protected and at your safest. Where you can leave the outside world on your doorstep and hide away from all the madness. The spot where you can shed the skin you wear in daily life and be yourself. Where you can literally let it all hang out and not have to worry about looking foolish or be ashamed. Where there are no surprises. Or are there? After you've watched I See You you'll want to have a quick glimpse under your bed, into the back of the closet and if you've a spare room you may as well have a snoop around there. Just in case like.

Two kids have vanished into thin air and a troubling piece of evidence is tying them back to a previous crime. The cop in charge of the case is Greg Harper (Jon Tenney), a veteran detective stressed out by his dysfunctional homelife. His marriage to Jackie (Helen Hunt) is in trouble and it's taking a toll on their son Connor (Judah Lewis). To make matters worse strange things are happening in their home. Cups and cutlery are vanishing. TV's and stereos seem to have a life of their own and no one is accepting responsibility for any of it. Is psychological turmoil causing things to seem worse than they are or is something totally different at play?

Oh I liked this one. A film that snuck out under the cover of all the recent madness and one that deserves a proper audience. It's satisfying stuff, confusing at first but one that builds to a climax that feels earned and hard hitting. It's starts off in a sneaky fashion with a stunning shot that nods towards a supernatural aspect but as the film moves forward it imperceptibly turns from chiller to thriller while still managing to stay creepy. The slowburn first half of the film lays the story out, introduces characters, lashes on a few of the tropes you'd expect to see but then at the halfway point the film's POV changes and you have to rethink everything you've just seen. Things that confused you earlier make sense suddenly and then everything flips onto it's head. You might guess how it's going to go a little earlier than the film wants you to but that doesn't makes things any less enjoyable.

It's a hard movie to talk about without spoilers but it's one of those rare films that seems unsettling even in it's daytime scenes. You know when you're at home alone and you hear a creak upstairs. Maybe it isn't the floorboards settling this time. That person you think you know better than yourself? Hmm maybe they aren't who you think they are. It's a film that will play on your mind for a long time after the credits roll and any film that can do that is a success in my book. It doesn't force feed us the plot either. Plenty of character actions are left unsaid and unexplained but everything we need to work things out is there, the onus is just on us to put it together. Screenwriter Devon Graye's script is a finely put together debut and director Adam Randall transfers it nicely to screen without feeling the need to resort to gratuitous nastiness like so many of his peers.

Like comedy, horror works best when you have a decent cast and Helen Hunt and Jon Tenney do nice work as a couple feeling the strain. An awful lot of DTV movies die on their arse because of casts with little or no experience repeating the words off the page with no feeling behind them. Good work from seasoned performers helps keep everything here grounded especially in the latter half of the film when things start feeling slightly silly. Tenney does a fine job of a man about to come apart at the seams.

I See You is out to stream on Google Movies and the usual streaming platforms. It's well worth a look.