I See You

Movie Name: I See You
Year of Release: 2019
Director: Adam Randall
Starring: Helen Hunt, Jon Tenney, Owen Teague, Judah Lewis, Libe Barer, Gregory Alan Williams, Erika Alexander, Allison Gabriel, Riley Caya, John Newberg, Jeremy Gladen, Teri Clark, Wyatt McClure, Brooks Roseberry
Genre: Crime, Drama
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 6
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Synopsis and Review

Director Adam Randall who has released some middle of the road features so far, may have with "I See You" his best calling card as of yet. Working with a script written by actor/writer Devon Graye, the story focuses on the story of a family who is on the verge of disintegration. Jackie Harper, the mother, had an extra marital affair which has brought tension to her relationship with her police officer husband Greg and their embittered son Connor. As Jackie slowly tries to make amends for what she did, her husband is in the middle of a new case, of a young boy who has been taken/kidnapped, in a small town where some wounds are still open from a prior case which also involved young boys being taken and killed. Odd things start occurring in the Harper household, which seem as if though some supernatural entity is at stake. When Jackie is surprisingly visited by her former lover, he is attacked by a mug that falls from the roof of the house. Jackie fears the attack came from her son, and she cares for but also hides her former lover Todd in the basement, while she takes Connor to school. Todd is mysteriously attacked and killed, which throws Jackie into a state of panic. She reaches out to Greg in despair. They jointly take the body into the woods and get rid of it. However things continue to escalate in the house. And Connor becomes the next victim. However, not all is what it seems.

"I See You" smartly concocts a narrative where what it initially seems like the storyline of a broken family dealing with a haunted house, it slowly turns out to be something quite different. The layers that the film and the storyline keep revealing add more and more sense to the motivations of the characters, in a format not all that dissimilar to what M. Night Shyamalan does with his films. The director and writer use their progressive disclosure strategy very smartly, never retorting to gratuitous violence, choosing instead to illustrate the family dynamics, the overall context in which these characters exist, to then start mining the terrain for everything that isn't necessarily right. By the time the third act unveils itself, the narrative has already been taken in a different direction, something that the epilogue further amplifies. The build out of this film is deftly done, save for the characters that inhabit it. Both Helen Hunt and Jon Tenney fail to bring much to their characters, who come across as rather generic TV drama/film of the week parents going through a challenging moment in time, with only the progressively more disturbing presence of Owen Teague's Alec taking the film into a more sinister territory. It's a film that manages to capture one's attention, one that is cleverly written but also in need of far more interesting and vivid characters (and better casting options). It's watchable and entertaining, but definitely could have been a far more disturbing and memorable feature.