A Filmmaker's Review: "I See You" (2019)

“I See You” (2019) is a thriller starring Helen Hunt who cheats on her detective husband whilst he is in the midst of investigating why young boys are going missing in the area. They have a son that they are terrified for after they find him tied up in a bathtub. They also have some weird shit happening in their house that they can’t figure out and the audience blame on supernatural events, even after the mother sees the face of a demonic frog resting underneath her son’s bed whilst he is going to sleep. This film has the biggest twist that when you really think about it makes perfect sense, but it never gives you the ‘why’ and so, it lost a couple of marks. It also never tells you why this guy who is stealing away these young boys is first of all caught and then not caught. You start to wonder about certain holes in the storyline and the film does its best to start tying up everything from about the second or third act.

One thing I love about this film is Helen Hunt. She a freaking genius all the time. I have always loved her as an actress in “Cast Away” and “As Good as it Gets”. I thought that this was a really challenging role for her and she totally stepped up to the challenge. It is supposed to be a woman we are supposed to dislike and then again, we are supposed to feel sorry for her. Helen Hunt makes a multi-layered performance which is just as iconic as her other roles and doesn’t get nearly enough appreciation. I didn’t actually read the cast list at all and yet, when I started watching the film and first saw her I was like ‘oh my god, Helen Hunt is in this movie!’

Another thing I love about this movie is the guy who plays the father, Jon Tenney, yes the same guy who plays Jay in “The Stepfather”. He was absolutely brilliant and you could never really guess what had happened if you were to just look at him. You kind of feel sorry for him when you see him passed out in front of the TV and then, the film moves you emotionally through the film to feeling even more sorry for him as he says that he may not be able to protect his son anymore when someone dies in their basement.

There’s a second storyline though. The second storyline involves a man wearing a demented creepy frog mask and a woman who is clearly scared. These two people have their own way of uncovering things and when these ‘things’ are uncovered, you realise why the man is wearing a demented frog mask. It is terrifying at first and then after a while, when you realise it, there’s something very symbolic about it. It turns into a traumatic experience when the viewer figures it all out through the mind of the man in the demented frog mask.

All in all, the film makes a great attempt at doing two separate storylines and then converging them upon the main storyline, making us realise that everything we first thought about the film is entirely wrong. No, it is not a murder mystery that the police have to solve involving some small boys we think are dead. No, it is not a thing that only the father, Greg Harper, can solve. No it is not a supernatural horror. Watch it for yourself and you may realise what exactly it is. When it comes to the genre, I would put it under thriller yes, but not a police drama because it doesn’t involve the police in the main storyline. One thing it does involve though is the turning back upon trauma to solve it for yourself. When the police go to a ‘survivor’s’ house and want to interview him, we see that he has been deprived of sunlight and his skin has turned veiny and pale. In comparison to the small, chubby child he was, he is now a tall and very skinny man. When the police come and see him, he starts violently screaming and that is possibly the most key scene in the whole film that turns everything on its head without you realising it.