MOVIE:
Sightless
WHERE TO WATCH IT:
RATING
2/5 Stars
WHAT IT'S ABOUT:
After being blinded by unknown assailants, Ellen Ashland (Madelaine Petsch) hides away from the world in a quiet apartment rented by her brother in an attempt to come to terms with her new reality. When she starts to hear unsettling sounds from next door, however, she becomes increasingly paranoid. But just because she's paranoid doesn't mean she's wrong.
WHAT WE THOUGHT:
Another month, another Riverdale star tries to make a break into film with typically mixed results. This time it's Madelaine Petsch, who has always been a lot of fun as Cheryl Blossom - especially in Riverdale's pulpiest, most gothic storylines - trying her hand at breaking in to feature films. Like her predecessors, K.J. Apa, Camila Mendes and Lili Reinhart, though, she's going to have to find something a whole lot more noteworthy to escape Riverdale's shadow.
Sightless isn't a bad film, to be sure, even if it is astonishingly silly, but though it's a perfectly acceptable psychological thriller that feels very at home on TV, it's an incredibly slight film that struggles to make any impression at all. This despite its bigger whopper of a twist that comes along about halfway through, a committed performance for Petsch, and a streamlined, fat-free 90-minute runtime.
From Rear Window to Murder on the Orient Express to Saw, single-location mysteries and thrillers are a movie staple that, at their best, offer concise, focused storytelling but can be intense and frightening but also playful and subversive. And, though no one in their right mind would list Sightless as anywhere near the top of this sub-genre, it does actually make good use of its own single location.
Written and directed by Cooper Karl (surely that's the wrong way around?) and based on his short of the same name, you can, at times, certainly tell that Sightless is the product of a first-time filmmaker, but a first-time filmmaker who certainly knows his genre films. The dialogue may be ear-scrapingly awful at times and the characterisation extremely shallow, but Karl clearly understands the mechanics of making a film like this, and he employs them well, if occasionally rather obviously. The big twist may be, in retrospect, overly telegraphed (I'm still kicking myself that I didn't see it coming a mile off) and completely nonsensical if you think about it for a second. But it is still well employed and satisfyingly of a piece with what came before it.
It's also undoubtedly true that Petsch is solidly convincing as a newly blind woman trying to come to terms with her new life and as someone slowly being unravelled by paranoia and the loss of an increasingly needed sense of sight. She's certainly better than the sort of actor that this sort of d-grade direct-to-video thriller normally attracts and she's clearly the standout in the film's small cast. The problem is that her character is really rather bland and she brings almost none of the personality that makes Cheryl Blossom such a terrifically enjoyable and complex character on Riverdale.
The rest of the cast aren't anywhere near as good but are fine, I suppose, in roles that are purposefully hollow and ill-defined. Even Alexander Koch, who has made a real name for himself in tons of well-received TV shows and indie films, just doesn't make much impact as Ellen's nurse/therapist turned potential love interest, Clayton.
It's ultimately these equivocations that are at the heart of what's wrong with the film. Yes, there are major flaws to be found throughout the film – no more so than in the dialogue and characterisation – but what really hurts Sightless is that there's just so little that's exemplary about it. Say what you want about the sub-genres spawned by stuff like Cube and Saw (with which this has plenty in common), they were "special" enough to warrant such rip-offs, sequels and spin-offs in the first place. Sightless is not without its fun, it's not poorly put together, and it's a perfectly passable way to spend 90 minutes (especially if you're a fan of this sort of thing), but it's all just a bit too bland to make any real, lasting impact.
It's not a bad choice for a lazy Sunday night, though.
WATCH THE TRAILER HERE: