See For Me Review: A Classic Horror Movie Gets A Gamer Turn

There’s a good reason why there are so many horror films and thrillers with blind protagonists – it’s an easy way to create great suspense. Film is a visual medium and it is a must to make the dangers visible to the audience. Making them invisible to the main character at the same time is usually a complicated process of planning, exposure, or staging. But taking a protagonist’s point of view out of the equation creates an immediate imbalance between the person on the screen and the viewers, who can see at any moment exactly what dangers their hero may be escaping.

Movies like Dancers in the dark, Julia’s eyes, The eye, flash, and In the dark all use blindness to make already vulnerable female leads even more vulnerable – not just to stalkers, predators, and supernatural threats, but also to self-doubt, marginalization, and dismissal from the people they were supposed to protect. But above all the new thriller See for me plays like a modern update of the 1967 classic Wait until it gets dark, starring Audrey Hepburn trying to outsmart manipulative criminal Alan Arkin after he broke into her home. See for me updates the home invasion formula with a few clever twists and an important relationship. But writers Adam Yorke and Tommy Gushue and director Randall Okita only push the formula forward before they run out of innovation.

Skyler Davenport plays Sophie, a former teenage ski champion who, after going blind, lives with an overprotective, presumptuous mother. Sophie has a lucrative sideline in cat-sitting for extremely wealthy people, which gets her out of the house and gives her some independence, but also often has to deal with new environments where she is unfamiliar with the arrangement. Complicating the situation even further, she is relentlessly independent and defies even the simplest tour of the newest sprawling glass and steel villa she oversees.

This puts her at a disadvantage if she accidentally locks herself out of the house – it’s in a remote wooded area, a long drive from help. So she tries a new help app, See For Me, which she connects with a helper who taps into her phone camera and tells her what’s around her. She and the helper, the cheerful military veterinarian and video gamer Kelly (Jessica Parker Kennedy), form a timid relationship that comes in handy when intruders break into the house to gain access to a large safe. Suddenly Sophie plays cat and mouse with three criminals whom she cannot see in a strange environment.

All of this has a pleasant meta-aspect to it for both gamers and horror movie fans. Kelly is a clear media lover who tunes into Sophie’s life remotely from a cozy gaming station with multiple monitors and an Alienware headset. In a way, she’s like a gamer playing a horror title trying to steer her attack past stormy enemies and changing environmental threats. In other words, Kelly is essentially a horror movie fan with the full freedom to yell, “Don’t go like this, he’s waiting for you!” Or “Pick up the gun and shoot him!” On screen without disturbing others.

Unlike most horror movie victims, Sophie can actually hear and respond to the hectic instructions from her audience. That’s where See for me deviates the most from that Wait until it gets dark Formula of a blind woman trying to outsmart and outwit a dangerous man – Sophie has at least a lifeline and an ally. But unlike a character in a horror game, Sophie regularly ignores Kelly’s instructions for a variety of clearly defined personal reasons, most of which she keeps a secret from her helper.

Much of the tension in the film lies in the swaying connection between the two women – whether Kelly can react enough to her limited interpretation of Sophie’s surroundings to provide useful guidance on how Sophie’s own significant agenda engages in the story, and how their personalities are match or collide. Simply the best part of the film is the push-and-pull between them, as Sophie’s bitterness at feeling dependent leads her to push back against Kelly, and Kelly’s military experience makes her demand more violence from Sophie than Sophie herself is dear.

When See for me as tight and smart as it was about the war between Sophie and the thieves, it would be an extraordinary thriller. It’s unfortunate that Gushue and Yorke tend to ditch potentially intriguing characters before they have a chance to develop, and that they eventually ditch the unique aspects of the film in favor of another already settled situation in the house. Okita has a great advantage from the environment, as his camera often observes Sophie through the many glass walls of the house, turning her into a thrashing animal navigating an oppressive aquarium.

However, other aspects of directing hinder the film significantly; Sluggish processing makes the final act clumsy, the score strangely generic and distant, and the repetition of Sophie stumbling around in the dark eventually accumulates in a frustrating way. Dynamic riveting is possible – see Not breathingwho flips the switch by turning the blind victim of a home invasion into the terrifying villain of history – but See for me does not do enough to tell one confrontation from the next once the real dangers arise.

The film has solid assets in Davenport and Kennedy. Sophie is just plain stubborn and self-pitying enough to feel more like a real person than a stock genius. Davenport hugs the chip on the character’s shoulder, making it seem like a natural, understandable result of their situation, even if the film shows how alienating and worrying their mild willingness to fight can be for other people. Kennedy has an appealing warmth with enough steel underneath to make her backstory meaningful, though the script doesn’t do her many favors by abandoning her development right after she begins revealing her past.

But the two women and their unusual partnership are enough See for me a pleasant distraction for the evening, good for a few shocks and surprises. It doesn’t get added to the pantheon of great horror films or make people forget about it Wait until it gets dark End that has been screaming audiences since 1967. But the filmmakers know about the clear advantages of this horror subgenre and are at least eager to exploit its horror potential and freshen it up for a new era.

See for me opens in theaters on January 7th and is available to rent or buy on Apple, Vudu, and other digital platforms.