The first time I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 film, Read Window, I thought that surely the film can’t be as straightforward as it seems. We watch as an incapacitated Jimmy Stewart watches the man across his backyard seems to murder his wife and do away with the remains. No one will believe him when he tries to tell the tale. I remember thinking that there must be a twist in here somewhere. But there wasn’t. This was more or less the feeling I had while watching I See You, a short film directed by Corey Davis and written by Kristen Desantis. This is one of the more shocking and controversial films I’ve seen recently. And a large part of that is due to the horrifying inevitability that unfolds in front of us.
The story is simple and can be told very quickly. An adult male spends his day stalking a young woman. He follows here to the cafe and watches her every move. When she gets home, he’s there, watching still. What happens next is almost more shocking because it is so predictable. I do not mean at all, in saying that the film is predictable, to criticize it. I think this use of predictability is actually a major strength of the film. I really expected some kind of twist, and when it failed to materialize, I was left stunned.
The film would perhaps make little sense without the self-proclaimed manifesto that appears at the beginning. It is, not to mince words, crazy. The opening scroll warns the viewer that the narrator is completely obsessed with the beauty of the girl he’s been stalking. He declares that tonight he will take action no matter what. What are we to make of this? There is also a short blurb that accompanied my copy of the film. It suggests that the protagonist might be desperately in love with the girl, or just very physically attracted to her. Or both. Or, most provocatively, he might be an incel. For those who don’t know, an incel is someone who claims to be ‘involuntarily celibate.’ Incels have been known to be the perpetrators of atrocities. In Toronto not too long ago, a self-proclaimed incel rented a van and proceeded to run over and murder ten people. As a native of Toronto who’s walked that very sidewalk many many times over the years, the suggestion that the protagonist was perhaps an incel hit pretty close to home.
The blurb goes on to suggest that the human brain is highly complex and that the man we see is struggling with all of these issues. As a viewer, though, I did not see a man struggling. I saw only a maniac who pursued his goal as doggedly as a man can. There is, I don’t believe, any dialogue at all in this film. We don’t know what’s going on in the man’s mind. We only see what he does. Perhaps the filmmakers decided to juxtapose a crazed manifesto and description with a plain and shocking visual story to accompany it in an effort to force us to reflect on the difference between the simplicity of what we see with the inscrutable complexity that lurks in our minds.
Films can be provocative. They can raise questions and force viewers to think harder about things they may not have thought much about before. If these are part of the measure of a good film, I would have to say that I See You succeeds. I personally found this film repellant in its overt and unvarnished portrayal of a violent stalker. There is an old saying that to understand all is to forgive all. I found myself reading the manifesto and description and refusing to really accept that the protagonist in this film was anything other that a purely evil criminal. No matter what turned this man into what he is, I did not want to excuse his actions. If this film’s goal was to force viewers to go through this sort of thought process, again, I would have to say that this film is a success.
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.