A young blind woman is menaced by a crew of robbers in this forgettable thriller.
Ever since Audrey Hepburn tiptoed around three home-invading thugs in “Wait Until Dark” (1967), the blind-person-in-peril narrative has been something of an entertainment staple. And while Randall Okita’s “See For Me” offers the novelty of a disabled character who is rather less than morally upstanding, this uninvolving thriller is as lacking in tension as credibility.
Consider, for instance, the police response time to the 911 call made by Sophie (Skyler Davenport), a young blind woman whose cushy house-sitting gig in upstate New York is interrupted by three robbers. By the time law enforcement shows up, most thieves could have cleaned out the property, staged it and put it on the market. Even if we forgive the movie’s pacing hiccups, we’re still left with a surprisingly unsympathetic main character — a snippy skiing champ turned petty crook in response to a degenerative eye disease — and a location so poorly lighted that its layout remains frustratingly unclear.
The plot’s coolest trick is to have Sophie fight back by means of an app that connects the visually impaired with sighted volunteers. Guided by one of these assistants — an Army veteran (played by Jessica Parker Kennedy) who just happens to be a whiz at first-person-shooter video games — Sophie takes on the intruders in generic cat-and-mouse setups squintingly illuminated by her cellphone flashlight.
Though Adam Yorke and Tommy Gushue’s script highlights the character’s — and the actor’s — exceptional capabilities (Davenport is legally blind), it lacks the imagination to explore Sophie’s scheming nature. Had it done so, I might still have disliked her, but I would have been more inclined to root for her.
See for Me
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
