Review: I See You Is a Twisty, Atmospheric Look at the Ties that Bind

The first half of I See You is a triumph of mood, steeped in seductive mystery and dread as it sets up its story. Jackie Harper (Helen Hunt) has recently cheated on her husband, Greg (Jon Tenney), upsetting the balance of their family, which includes their teenage son, Connor (Judah Lewis). Greg’s a detective, investigating the disappearance of a 10-year-old boy (Riley Caya) whose abduction in the woods we witness in the first scene; he appears to be lifted off his bike, in slow motion, as if being beamed up to an alien spaceship. Other flashes of horror and the paranormal intrude into the mostly housebound film: photographs go missing from the Harper home, their silverware turns up in the dryer, a coffee mug winds up on the roof, and the record player and TV turn on by themselves. It’s as if the house is haunted.

This isn’t a supernatural film, though, and Devon Graye’s script ultimately ties together I See You’s disparate threads—family drama, crime thriller, home-invasion horror—by grounding them in the perils and traumas of the real world. Under the direction of Adam Randall, the film’s tone is extremely eerie, with creeping camera movements, striking imagery, abrupt edits, and a delicately sinister score by William Arcane. They all help to elevate the domestic drama at the story’s core and make it much more compelling than it might otherwise be.

The second half of I See You retells the events of the first half from a different perspective, becoming a more prosaic horror film. But if the mysteries from the first half are answered, disappointingly stripped of their otherworldly aura, there are still plenty of role reversals and plot twists that advance the story into new themes. At first, I See You plays on the idea that people could be living in your home without your knowing it (recalling a recent and terrifying Twitter thread by author, screenwriter, and horror enthusiast Grady Hendrix). This thoughtfully echoes the drama at the film’s core, as mother, father, and son grapple with infidelity—the feeling that another man is figuratively haunting their family.

It turns out there are darker secrets than that hanging over the Harpers, and the film becomes one about child abuse and how its effects manifest over time. Recalling Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, it also flirts with the theme of class consciousness, about people occupying more space than they can use, whose extra rooms are stealthily seized by a couple of have-nots. One of them simmers with resentment, for myriad reasons, at the Harpers’ upper-middle-class comforts, and the film initially pitches him as a tad psychotic. But, in the end, it’s the powerful and well-off who turn out to be a whole lot crazier—and a whole lot more criminal.