"See For Me" a smart, tight, skillful blind-woman-in-peril thriller

See For Me (2022)

The home-invasion thriller continues to be a hot commodity, and it’s easy to see why: everyone can relate to the fear of someone coming into their safe space. “See For Me,” while a contemporary riff on “Wait Until Dark,” is a smart, tight, and skillfully constructed indie thriller that breathes life into a familiar blind-woman-in-peril setup with some moral complexity and good old-fashioned tension.

Blind former skier Sophie Scott (Skyler Davenport) escapes her protective mother by accepting a cat-sitting gig from divorcee Debra (Laura Vandervoort). Once at the house, Sophie settles in, getting a lay of the land with a FaceTime call from a friend, who refuses to help her steal from another house again. Luckily, Mom has emailed her information on a new app called “See For Me” where the visually impaired is helped by a seeing person. In Sophie’s case, her call is answered by gamer Kelly (Jessica Parker Kennedy) when locking herself out of the house. Later that night, while Sophie is sleeping, two men break into the home, ready to drill for something in the wall. Can Sophie survive on her own, or will Kelly come through?

Not completely outside the realm of plausibility, “See For Me” has a great hook and runs with it. Director Randall Okita, working from a script by Adam Yorke and Tommy Gushue, efficiently sets up the geography of the house and milks every minute of his compact running time without making the film feel padded. In fact, more scenes between Sophie and Kelly just talking and revealing more about themselves actually would have been welcome. Jessica Parker Kennedy is absolutely magnetic to watch as Kelly, and that’s a testament to her performance, considering her material is limited (her military background does fill in certain gaps). Make no mistake, though, this is Skyler Davenport’s show. Having experienced adult-onset vision loss herself, the actress brings authenticity to the role and keeps the viewer thoroughly invested.

One of the strongest assets behind “See For Me” is how Sophie has been written. The script makes sure the character isn’t some saintly victim or merely an easy target solely defined by her disability or even just her Winter Olympics-sized potential. She’s bitter, surly, and more than a little bit stubborn, trying not to ask for help when she’d prefer to do it herself. Sophie also has ulterior motives in cat-sitting, just so she can survive, and might continue that once the intruders are inside. The perpetrators here are mostly generic, even if they do get faces and not just ski masks to wear. Character actor Kim Coates, however, is the most recognizable in the cast, and he is impressively creepy and intimidating as the mystery man on the phone. Helping with the palpability of the tension, too, is a propulsive score by music-composing team Menalon (Lodewijk Vos and Joseph Murray). Even if it won’t change lives, “See For Me” does what it wants to do effectively.

Grade: B

IFC Midnight is releasing “See For Me” (92 min.) in select theaters and on demand on January 7, 2022.