See for Me
One of my last memories is when my mother took me to a stage version of Wait Until Dark. I’ve also seen the film starring Audrey Hepburn and Alan Arkin. This story shape has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I never expected to see a modern take of the narrative, but in watching Randall Okita’s thriller, I have, and they do as well of a job as you could expect.
The screenplay by Adam Yorke and Tommy Gushue is tight but also has some layers to it. You’ll see some of them coming, but others maybe not so much. All the movie has to do is execute, and Okita and his collaborators, especially lead actor Skyler Davenport, do just that.
Sophie (Davenport) is a former skier who’s been sidelined on account of going blind. She’s figured out how to do things on her own, but she does live her mother, who is concerned when she seems to be sneaking out. Sophie is going to a job, however; she’s going to go cat sit for a recent divorcee (Laura Vandervoort) in the mountains. She initially calls a friend of hers (Keaton Kaplan) who helps guide her around the house, and we learn a bit more about who Sophie is, and where she might have had more than her life trajectory changed by her circumstances. That makes what happens that night, a break-in of three men trying to get to something in a safe, interesting.
Just by that setup, you see a lot of where I compare this film to “Wait Until Dark.” There’s a lot of shoe leather in the earlier film that is nixed here, and “See for Me” is better for it. Where does the title come from? “See for Me” is the name of an app for blind people where they are connected with a seeing person on call to help them however they need help. The person that represents the app for Sophie is Kelly (Jessica Parker Kennedy), whom we first see doing online gaming. That will come in handy when the break-in happens. The film uses that first-person-shooter experience we see from Kelly in how she guides Sophie through the situation. Things get a bit more convoluted with the story as the robbery unfolds, and Sophie gets more and more involved, but Okita keeps things moving briskly, with Davenport as a strong lead to build the film around. It’s a nifty, tense thriller.
