#sophie has to switch characters every three minutes because there's someone she conned who thinks she's a Russian mobster

[scleroticstatue]

I want a Leverage episode where the whole con is based around a lockpicking competition. And because Parker needs to actually be there picking the locks and cracking the safes, she cannot be the person playing the lockpick/safecracker. And that is the whole premise.

[fuckyeahfightlock]

No scary movies this weekend! On Saturday I was half waiting around for my kiddo to watch one with me, but she was busy with friends and never showed up, which was actually fine because I literally sat on the couch crocheting and watching "I Am A Killer" on Netflick all day. The only truly scary thing that happened was that I ate a whole pizza.

Today I had a to-do list like what, and instead of parking on the sofa for a movie "just until the laundry comes out of the washer" (ie, all day, forget it, what are to-do's?) I played Hades in between tasks, as that game has the built-in feature that generally a run takes 10 - 40 minutes, then you inevitably die (even if you had a really good run you still die and have to start over), so there's a natural stopping place where you can go switch the laundry, take out the trash because yr husband is away again this week, make the grocery list/meal plan for the week, etc. (Hub being away makes me want to just have pizza or pasta every night but my children are weird and possibly not related to me, so neither of them wants pizza or pasta except on rare occasions.)

But on Friday! I watched a scary (ish) movie from O, Canada, called See For Me. A blind former world-class skier endures a home invasion while housesitting. OK I'M INTERESTED. You know I love a home invasion horror!

So, the pros. Skylar Davenport, who plays visually impaired Sophie, is a visually impaired actress! Sophie is a morally grey character (she's kind of an asshole, and she steals from the owner of the house she's minding--and we learn this is a habit of hers) which makes things more interesting. Max from Black Sails (Jessica Parker Kennedy) is in this film. Sophie's blindness is not the source of her vulnerability; she seems as capable as any teenager trapped in a house with three Very Bad Guys.

The cons. The script is a little amateurish and simple, and aside from Sophie the characters are pretty two-dimensional. It feels more like an action movie than a horror movie; there aren't a lot of scares and the tension is assumed rather than built. Sophie gets a handgun in act three, suddenly she's an action hero picking off bad guys rather than a final girl using her wits to escape.

My anecdote for this one is that I read the description and thought, great, blind girl in a home invasion, let's gooooooo. Then watched for a stupidly long time with very dark, blurry, weirdly coloured visuals. I thought at first it was a choice, to make the viewer understand Sophie's impairment, emphasize her vulnerability. But at some point, you have to think since this is a movie, that it will switch to a more traditional visual. But it didn't do that. So eventually, I started googling. No, the movie isn't Like That, it's that Roku TV sent an update the previous night that reset a bunch of stuff, including applying "Roku Smart Picture" to the picture settings on my television set, which will "automatically choose the right setting" among movie, sports, low quality (who wants that?), standard, etc. It did not choose correctly. So with some help from Reddit, I fixed my TV and started the movie from the beginning. No part of it is meant to make the viewer see things from Sophie's perspective. It's just a normal movie.

The film's title comes from an app Sophie uses called See For Me, which connects to a volunteer who, via the user's phone camera, can look around the environment and help the blind person "see." When Sophie accidentally locks herself out of the house, Kelly--a retired soldier on the other side of the country--helps her break back in. Later, when Sophie realises there is someone in the house, she connects with Kelly again to help maneuver through the house and eventually even handle and fire a handgun. It's an interesting conceit, but ultimately, the movie is just OK, and the ending is downright Hallmarky. It feels kind of Made For TV.

Worth a watch if you like a thriller and don't mind a formulaic one; it's well acted and engaging.