Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Randall Okita
Starring: Skyler Davenport, Kim Coates, Pascal Langdale, Joe Pingue, George
Tchortov, Jessica Parker Kennedy, Laura Vandervoort
Blind young women have long been favoured protagonists for thrillers. The
most famous example is 1967's Wait Until Dark, in which Audrey Hepburn outwits home invaders by plunging her apartment
into darkness, thus levelling the field. More recently we've seen such
thrillers as
Blind
and
In Darkness
employ the trope. Perhaps the best thriller with a blind protagonist is
Richard Fleischer's 1971 See No Evil, in which Mia Farrow delivers a stunning performance as a recently
blinded woman menaced by an ambiguous psychopath.
With Canadian thriller See for Me, director Randall Okita takes this well-worn format but brings it
into the modern age in two distinct ways. For a start the protagonist is
played by a visually impaired performer, Skyler Davenport,
answering any questions regarding the logistics of such casting. Secondly
it sees very modern technology employed as a key part of its plot.
Okita seems to be a fan of Fleischer's film. In See No Evil, Farrow's protagonist was a promising young equestrian blinded in a
horse-riding accident. Here, Davenport plays Sophie, a promising young
downhill skier blinded in an accident on the slopes.
Unwilling to return to the slopes, Sophie has become withdrawn, and has
come up with an illegal way of lining her bank account. Taking
house-sitting jobs without disclosing her condition, Sophie then raids the
wine cellars of her wealthy clients, figuring they won’t notice the
disappearance of one expensive bottle among hundreds.
Sophie's latest mark is rich divorcee Debra (Laura Vandervoort),
who leaves her in charge of her cat, Sophie having successfully conned her
into believing she can see. When Sophie accidentally gets locked out of
the house, she avails of 'See for Me', an app that puts blind people in
touch with helpers who use their camera-phones to guide them around.
Sophie's request is answered by Kelly (Jessica Parker Kennedy), an
ex-soldier who now spends her days playing online video games. With
military precision, Kelly guides Sophie back into the house.
That night, Sophie is awoken by voices and finds three men have broken
into the house and are in the process of emptying the safe. Desperate,
Sophie redials Kelly, hoping she can guide her to safety.
As a thriller, See for Me never quite works as well as it
should. This is largely down to the use of the 'See for Me' app, which
gives Sophie a working set of eyes and so considerably reduces the
tension. With Kelly acting as her eyes, Sophie is essentially no longer
visually impaired as far as the setup goes, so it becomes a more generic
thriller than its initial premise would suggest.
When Sophie and Kelly combine their skills, they actually have something
of an advantage over the home invaders, which again impacts the potential
for suspense and tension, and there's one moment where one of the villains
is treated in a manner that comes off as unnecessarily heartless. This
isn't so much a story of a helpless female protagonist growing into a
kickass heroine as it's the story of a helpless female protagonist who
instantly becomes a kickass heroine by dialling up an app. There's also
the potentially problematic aspect of a blind protagonist having to rely
on the aid of a sighted helper...
It's only in the climax, when Sophie finds herself left without the aid of
the app and forced to rely on her own ingenuity, that
See for Me finally becomes the sort of cat and mouse
thriller you expect from its premise. We're left to wonder how much more
effective a thriller this might have been had its heroine not had the aid
of modern technology.
Perhaps what's most refreshing about See for Me is how it
gives us a disabled protagonist and refuses to portray them in a
patronisingly angelic light. From the off, Sophie is difficult to warm to,
even if her attitude is perhaps understandable. In a nice twist, Sophie
does something that makes her role in the narrative morally ambiguous, but
without spoiling anything, it's a plot shift that has great potential but
is dispensed with too quickly.
See for Me is on Shudder UK now.