I See You (2019 film)

Ten-year-old Justin Whitter is abducted while riding his bicycle through a local park. Greg Harper (Jon Tenney) is made lead detective on the case. Evidence in the form of a green pocket knife is found connecting this case to a previous series of abductions which resulted in the conviction of another man many years prior. Harper's family is shown to be going through its own troubles based on an affair his wife, Jackie (Helen Hunt), had been engaged in. Their son, Connor (Judah Lewis), is very resentful toward his mother because of the affair.

Mysterious events begin plaguing the house; all the silverware and Jackie's favorite coffee mug go missing, and a window repairman is let in by someone inside the house while the family is away. Jackie's former lover, Todd (Sam Trammel), arrives at the house, and is injured when Jackie's coffee mug falls from the roof and hits him on the head. Jackie hides him in the basement so she can take Connor to school. While looking around the basement, Todd is hit over the head by an unknown assailant and Jackie comes home to find him dead. She panics and assumes that Connor has killed Todd. She and Greg take the body to a wooded area and bury his body, hoping to give Connor an alibi.

Connor is shown footage of "phrogging", a practice in which people hide in a house unbeknownst to the owners and move around freely when alone in the house, and is attacked by a figure in a frog mask. Greg and Jackie find Connor tied up in the bathtub with a green pocket knife nearby. Jackie drives Connor to the hospital while Greg searches the house and is attacked with an axe by the frog-masked figure.

The film then jumps back in time and reveals that the mysterious happenings in the house are caused by two people, Mindy (Libe Barer) and Alec (Owen Teague), who have been "phrogging" in the Harper home. Mindy, an experienced phrogger, tries to keep a very low profile so that she never gets caught, while novice phrogger Alec decides he wants to make the family believe they are going insane. Every mysterious occurrence in the film is shown to have been caused by Alec, including the missing silverware and Todd's incapacitation. However, while Todd is in the basement, Mindy witnesses Greg killing him and goes to alert Alec, only to see him incapacitating Connor in the bathtub. She argues with Alec, who mistakenly pushes her down the stairs and knocks her out. Alec hides her in Greg's car. Greg and Jackie find Connor in the bathtub and Jackie takes him to the hospital. After Jackie leaves, Greg takes his own car, taking Mindy with him without realizing it.

Mindy awakens in the car and finds a bag of green pocket knives and Justin Whitter's shirt, realizing that Greg is the kidnapper. Greg parks in the forest, where Mindy finds an old trailer with all the abducted children trapped in makeshift closets. As Mindy tries to free them, Greg ambushes her and returns to the house with her. He forces her to stand up before shooting her dead, then doctors the scene to make it appear that she attacked him and he killed her in self-defense. Alec gets Greg's attention and attacks him with an axe. Greg knocks Alec out, but he stirs and takes Greg's gun. Revealing that he knows Greg's identity as the kidnapper, Alec reveals his face to Greg, who appears to recognize him. Greg attempts to explain himself, but Alec makes it clear that he does not care before shooting and killing Greg. Greg's partner Spitzky arrives and shoots Alec, but Alec survives and the two recognize each other.

The boys are rescued from the trailer and Greg's bags containing the police evidence are found. Jackie and Connor arrive to find their home has become swarmed with police cars and ambulances. Flashbacks are shown of a younger Alec and a friend encountering Greg, who hands Alec a green pocket knife, as the present day Alec - a previous victim of Greg's - is carried into an ambulance. This explains why, earlier in the film, Alec picked that particular house to phrog and begged Mindy to come with him.

• Helen Hunt as Jackie Harper
• Jon Tenney as Greg Harper
• Judah Lewis as Connor Harper
• Owen Teague as Alec
• Libe Barer as Mindy
• Gregory Alan Williams as Spitzky
• Erika Alexander as Lieutenant Moriah Davis
• Allison King as Officer Grace Caleb
• Adam Kern as Window Repairman
• Sam Trammell as Todd
• Jeremy Gladen as Tommy Braun
• Teri Clark as Mrs. Braun
• Nicole Forester as Mrs. Whitter

Helen Hunt joined the cast in June 2017.[5][6] Principal photography took place in May 2018 around Chagrin Falls, Cleveland and Lakewood, Ohio.[7][8][9][10]

As of June 2020, I See You holds a 76% approval rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 38 reviews, and an average rating of 6.26/10. The site's consensus reads: "I See You gets tripped up on its own narrative contortions, but a solid cast and an effective blend of scares and suspense make this slow-building mystery worth watching."[11] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 65 out of 100, based on 8 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[12]

Dennis Harvey in Variety described the film as "an eerie suspense exercise that starts out looking like a supernatural tale — one of several viewer presumptions this cleverly engineered narrative eventually pulls the rug out from under."[13] Stephen Dalton of The Hollywood Reporter stated, "I See You is such a finely crafted exercise in slow-burn suspense that its loopy plot contortions only seem absurd in retrospect," and elaborated, "actor turned first-time screenwriter Devon Graye's tricksy script keeps audiences on their toes with all this multi-viewpoint misdirection, so much so that most will be caught off-guard by further major reveals."[14]

• I See You (2019) on IMDb
• I See You (2019) at Metacritic
• I See You (2019) at Rotten Tomatoes