See For Me
In the home she shares with her understandably protective mother Sophie has placed little cues, things to help, to allow her to cope alone, but that isn’t enough for her. A former champion downhill skier whose eyes were on the Olympics until she went blind, Sophie Scott’s thwarted ambition has turned to resentment and a fierce determination to prove she can cope as well as anyone.
Working as a housesitter, her latest client lives in a magnificent open-plan multi-level house in upstate New York where Sophie will take care of Archie the cat while Debra jets off to celebrate her divorce, any additional help she needs provided by the “See For Me” app on her phone which allows an operator to guide her via her cellphone camera, a lifeline for Sophie when late on her first night the house is broken into by three men.
Screened at the Tribeca Film Festival and the BFI London Festival, See For Me is directed by Randall Okita from a script by Adam Yorke and Tommy Gushue, a thriller told from the point of view of Skyler Davenport as Sophie and the remote support and encouragement of The Flash’s Jessica Parker Kennedy as Kelly, the gamer who picks up the call and acts as her eyes.
Sophie convinced she can do anything and get away with it, she is no typical damsel in distress with an established side hustle in stealing discrete high-value items from her clients to sell for cash and ultimately bargaining for a slice of the pie in return for her silence when she is caught, but she is also a frustrating individual, selfish, stubborn and spending the first half of the film doing precisely what she is asked or advised not to.
The three burglars played by Pascal Langdale, George Tchortov and Joe Pingue, the precision and ease with which they penetrate the house and locate the hidden safe and the secret fortune inside leaves little question as to the identity of their offscreen ringleader played by Sons of Anarchy’s Kim Coates, and none are afforded anything more complex than the most basic characterisation.
An otherwise unremarkable home invasion thriller, Sophie’s vulnerability is all that raises See For Me above the mundane, the sense of helplessness making some of the action scenes terrifying but equally rendering the contrivances unbelievable; Los ojos de Julia told a similar story in a more interesting way while La Femme aux Chaussures Leopard was more inventive in its restricted vision of a single location.
See For Me will be available on Shudder in the US and other streaming platforms internationally
