CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: ADAM RANDALL / SCREENPLAY: DEVON GRAYE / STARRING: HELEN HUNT, JON TENNEY, JUDAH LEWIS, OWEN TEAGUE / RELEASE DATE: MAY 25TH
It follows a suburban family beset by unexplainable events that may be linked to the recent disappearance of a young boy. Whilst cycling home through the woods a ten-year-old boy is seemingly snatched by an invisible entity. Detective Greg Harper (Tenney) is assigned to the case, and whilst searching the woods clues are discovered that relate to similar disappearance cases a decade before. To add to Harper’s woes his family is navigating the fall out of his wife Jackie’s (Hunt), affair. Suddenly, the Harper family is beset by unexplainable events that may be linked to the recent disappearance of the young boy.
I See You is director Adam Randall’s sophomore feature, and what an ambitiously complex film it is. It may be low budget, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it. Writer Devon Graves’ screenplay is pared right back to the bone, and Randall directs like he’s a seasoned professional. I See You is a taught, slow burn exercise in nerve shredding tension.
Philipp Blaubach’s cinematography adds to the tension. It’s bright, light and airy, which only serves to emphasise the eerie shenanigans, TVs and record players switching themselves on; draws empty of cutlery; photographs disappearing from their frames, and Greg being shoved into, and locked, in a closet.
About the midway point, Randall and Graves perform an audacious move and one that could have spectacularly failed. The film stops and begins again, but from a different perspective. It’s certainly not a unique concept, but it happens so abruptly and flawlessly, and with such panache that it works brilliantly. Certain characters are revealed to something entirely different from what has previously been portrayed, as well as two new major characters being introduced. To say anymore would dangerously cross the line into spoiler territory, suffice to say that this film has twists and turns aplenty, and begins as one thing whilst ending as something else entirely.
As this is an Arrow Blu-ray, the extras are more than you’d get with a standard studio release. There’s the obligatory trailer, which as is so often the case these days portrays the film to be something more than it actually is. A making of… is also included and at only twenty minutes or so in length it is engaging and informative without outstaying its welcome. There are also filmed interviews with Helen Hunt who clearly had a great time straying into low budget genre film territory, and Adam Randall whom expounds points he made in the making off of how he became involved in the project. Finally, there’s a very short extra demystifying the bike stunt that opens the film, and the requisite director’s commentary.
