A lot of thrillers promise you’ll be “on the edge of your seat,” “white knuckling it” or other sensational claims, but few follow through on such guarantees. Adam Randall’s I See You doesn’t merely make good on the edge of your seat bit, it’s so fucking suspenseful it has you hovering *above* your seat in anticipation and screaming back down into it when the multiple instances of nerve shredding payoff hit. It’s a fantastic home invasion thriller, a skin drawling horror flick and somehow has this odd, surreal aura to it that it never fully explores but maintains on the fringes of our awareness like the unsettling memory of a mostly forgotten nightmare. I literally can’t explain more than the super basic premise here or I’ll ruin the many amazing, tantalizing and eerie surprises it has to offer, you just have to dive in blind for this baby.
So basically there’s this small town homicide detective (Jon Tenney from True Detective Season 3), his wife (Helen Hunt, where has she been this past decade?) and their kid (Judah Lewis) and they’re really not on great terms as a family. Young boys are disappearing around the town and he’s forced to put most of his energy into investigations while his wife and son try and coexist with civility. Then all of a sudden weird shit starts happening around their house like things gone missing, out of place, odd bumps in the night etc. Is it all connected somehow? The fun is in this superbly twisty guessing game of a narrative that will *actually* keep seasoned pros who think they’ve seen every turn of events in the dark. Some of the camera work here is downright brilliant, with swooping crane, fluid dolly and pan shots that give the illusion of gliding through this diabolical story. The score by William Arcane must be mentioned as well, not since the Sinister films have I heard a more disorienting, otherworldly collection of wails, moans and such ghostlike auditorial menace, it really adds to the whole deal in a dreamlike way. Aside from a few slightly murky plot details (to be fair, this is a tough rig to navigate through the canyon flawlessly) this is as close to a perfectly orchestrated thriller as I’ve seen in a while, not to mention about as suspenseful, immersive and scary too. Highly recommended.
-Nate Hill
Podcasting Them Softly 