See No Evil

c h r i s4.5

No one talks about this movie and that’s a damn shame! Second time watching and it still managed to get under my skin and Mia Farrow is an absolute gem, but that goes without saying of course.

ItsMeShubham2.5

A blind woman is stalked by a killer, but the real horror is the film's pacing. It’s a sluggish, suspense-free ride where the tension is as hard to find as the plot’s logic

WestyMovieCrypt4.0

In a world of darkness, evil can hide anywhere.Sarah has just left the hospital after a horseback-riding accident left her blind, she's staying with her auntie and uncle where the accident took place. A day or two after she arrives and settles in, Sarah goes to meet her boyfriend, Steve. After a couple of hours, she’s dropped off at home and goes to bed, unaware that whilst she was out with Steve, a psychotic killer has murdered her relatives. She wakes up early in the morning and assumes that the others are sleeping, she hears Steve outside so gets dressed and meets him, where she discovers that he’s given her a horse as a present. Later that day whilst running a bath, she discovers the bodies of her family and falls down the basement in a panic. When she comes around, she finds her way into the hallway where she finds a bracelet with a name engraved onto it. Blind and terrified, she realises the killer is going to come back to retrieve the bracelet, when he does, Sarah is going to have to escape and get to safety.I have to admit I’m not a huge fan of Mia Farrow, apart from Rosemary’s Baby and this, I’ve always found her quite irritating. I thought she was excellent in See No Evil, her British accent is spot on and she’s totally convincing as a blind woman. The way she moves and touches her way around the house is very believable, and there’s several scenes where she looks genuinely terrified. Like most people, I seem to have read and heard more about her marriages to Frank Sinatra, Andre Previn and her relationship with Woody Allen than her films, but if Rosemary’s Baby, this and my relatively recent viewing of The Haunting of Julia are anything to go by, I’m thinking I need to go back and re-evaluate some of her other films. Dorothy Alison and Robin Bailey are good as her auntie and uncle, Norman Eshley is quite likeable as Steve, and there’s an early role for Michael Elphick as a gypsy called Tom.It was confidently directed by Richard Fleischer, a director who has made more than a couple of great films. The Vikings, Tora! Tora! Tora!, The Boston Strangler, 10 Rillington Place and Soylent green are just a few of his better films, he also directed the Schwarzenegger films Conan the Destroyer and Red Sonja before retiring in 1987, he passed away aged 89 in 2006. It was written by Brian Clemens who was just coming off writing the excellent And Soon the Darkness the year before, his script is packed full of tense and suspenseful scenes, he was awarded the OBE in the 2010 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for his services to Broadcasting and to Drama. He later wrote and directed the wonderful Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter. The music in the film is excellent by Academy Award winner Elmer Bernstein, the beautiful cinematography by Gerry Fisher perfectly captures the wet and dull Berkshire countryside.See No Evil was met with mixed reviews from film critics. Roger Greenspun of The New York Times wrote: “See No Evil has its share of thrills. Cheap thrills, to be sure, but thrills none the less—and everything in the rest of Richard Fleischer’s new movie... encourages us to value small favors. Attempting on the one hand to mean something and on the other hand trying to crank up the terror, Fleischer keeps suggesting confrontations between the rich and the poor, the old and the young, families with daughters to protect and men with warped desires. For all the potency of a camera movement, it can never have exactly the power of a conceptual image, and therefore See No Evil is better with its mindless terror than with its witless meaning. And although everything becomes far too much long before it is over, the movie is generally at it most ridiculous precisely where it hopes to make sense.” Variety called it “a perfect modern specimen of the old-style A-plus suspense programmer which often broke through to the big time... Superbly written... brilliantly photographed,” while The Guardian called it “a simple exercise in suspense” that is “effective in only a purely mechanical way.” “For sheer suspense”, wrote The Palm Beach Post, it “may well be without peer”, but, while praising the performance of Farrow, considered the “fiendish gamut” of injury her character is subjected to could “only be called sadism.” Jim Meyer of the Miami Herald also described the film as “sadistic”, but praised its realism, particularly in reference to Farrow’s portrayal of a blind person. Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times heralded Farrow’s “tour-de-force” performance in a role “ideally suited for her gifts in expressing great vulnerability matched by fierce spirit,” as well as praising Fleischer’s direction, which he felt maintains “a pace so breakneck that there’s simply no time to think about whether something is believable or not.” Donald Miller of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette uniformly praised the cast, as well as the film’s use of autumnal English country locations and its pacing. The Oregon Journal’s Arnold Marks also praised Farrow’s performance and the use of locations, deeming the film a “good shocker.”Later reviewers have described the film as a “creepy, atmospheric thriller”, in the style of Terence Young’s 1967 film Wait Until Dark, while critic John Derry highlights the way Mia Farrow is presented “from the first moment” as “the obvious victim”. Film historian John Kenneth Muir praised the film in his book Horror Films of the 1970s (2007), calling it “sadistic” and “one of those movies that is so successful at creating empathy for its star (and in expressing her limited point of view) that it becomes anxiety provoking.”Based on the film’s conceit of showing the killer solely in close-up from the legs down, his identity is concealed by having all possible suspects filmed only from the waist up in all medium and long shots.See No Evil is a really, really good, but not great film. The directing and acting is very strong, but there is the odd moment of unintentional humour. There’s a tense atmosphere created after the reasonably slow but interesting opening half hour, and some superb creepy moments like when the relatives bodies are first shown and a scene in a bathroom towards the end of the film. Some would say that the film is now extremely dated, it’s very ‘70s with the clothes, the music, even the way they talk seems ‘70s. I disagree with older films being called dated, if I watch a film made in the ‘70s and set in the ‘70s, I want it to look and sound like the ‘70s. I want to see the strange haircuts and clothes, I want to see the old dial phones, I want to see people smoking in a pub, it’s a great reminder of how things used to be. Not really a horror film, it’s more a suspenseful thriller with the odd creepy scene. If you’re after a blood and guts horror film I suggest looking elsewhere, if you want a really well crafted, suspenseful thriller, then this is a good choice. Recommended.