I See You: Now You See a Haunted House, Now You Don’t
There are movies that ease you into their weirdness, and then there’s I See You, which politely introduces itself as a somber missing-kid drama and then halfway through rips off its own face to reveal… an entirely different movie hiding underneath. Directed by Adam Randall from a twist-drunk script by Devon Graye, this 2019 thriller is like three genres in a trench coat, and somehow, against all odds, the trench coat fits. Wikipedia+1
We start with a classic horror image: a ten-year-old boy, Justin, snatched mid–bike ride by an unseen force. It’s brutal, simple, and effective—like the universe saying, “Welcome, please enjoy your anxiety.” Detective Greg Harper (Jon Tenney) is put on the case, which conveniently arrives right as his home life is imploding thanks to wife Jackie’s recent affair. Connor, their teenage son, resents her, Greg is sleeping elsewhere, and the family has that special flavor of tension you usually only see in divorce attorneys’ marketing materials.
Then the house starts acting… off. Things go missing. Pictures move. A repairman swears a strange girl let him in, which is news to this childless couple of one. Greg gets locked in a closet by… no one, apparently. It’s the setup for a straightforward “is the house haunted or is everyone losing it?” tale. And, for a while, the movie plays along—with ominous drone shots, chilly suburban landscapes, and a score that quietly whispers, “Someone is absolutely going to die in this kitchen.” Roger Ebert+1
Helen Hunt, in rare horror territory, leans into Jackie’s brittle guilt. She’s not a saintly mom; she’s messy, flawed, desperate to glue her family back together with apologies and casseroles. Tenney’s Greg is a study in tightly wound repression, the kind of man whose smile looks like it’s carrying a non-disclosure agreement. Judah Lewis makes Connor just sympathetic enough that you forgive him for weaponizing teen sulk as a blunt instrument. It’s a nicely toxic little trio, and the movie could’ve coasted as a creepy domestic chiller and still been solid. The People’s Movies+1
But I See You has absolutely no interest in coasting. Just when you’re ready to settle into “okay, fine, ghosts,” the film yanks the narrative rug with a perspective flip that replays events from the first half… and casually explains that those “hauntings” were actually two phroggers—Mindy (Libe Barer) and Alec (Owen Teague)—secretly living in the Harpers’ house. Yes, “phrogging” is a real term for people hiding in occupied homes. Yes, it’s a deeply cursed concept. No, you will never look at your attic the same way again.
This mid-film shift is where I See You earns its rave “go in blind” recommendation. Critics at SXSW and beyond praised its twisty, multi-viewpoint construction, and they’re right: it’s less a plot twist and more a full-on genre pivot. Dread Central+2The Hollywood Outsider+2 What looked like a ghost story becomes a tense, almost voyeuristic thriller about two young drifters watching a family implode from inside the walls—until that version of the story is itself hijacked by yet another revelation.
Libe Barer gives Mindy a wary humanity; she’s not there to torment the Harpers, just to exist in the cracks they never look at. Alec, however, played with unnerving intensity by Owen Teague, gets bored with hiding and decides to gaslight the family for kicks. It’s like a morally bankrupt Home Alone reboot: he moves things, messes with electronics, escalates pranks into psychological warfare. It’s darkly funny until it isn’t—and the movie knows exactly when to dial the humor down and the dread up. Dread Central+1
The real masterstroke is how the script uses all this misdirection to smuggle in a nastier, more grounded horror: Greg isn’t just a stressed-out detective; he’s also the kind of predator he’s supposed to be hunting. The green pocket knife that ties the new abduction to an old case? Not a red herring, just a painfully literal one. When Mindy accidentally hitches a ride in Greg’s trunk and discovers his bag of knives and evidence, the film fully commits to its most chilling idea—that the true monster in this “haunted house” wasn’t the house, the phroggers, or some unseen force. It was Dad. All along.
Reviews have praised exactly this precision plotting: the way the narrative keeps recontextualizing what you’ve seen without feeling like a cheap “gotcha.” The Fresh Films+2The Ace Black Blog+2 The first half is creepy because you don’t know what’s happening; the second half is creepier because you do, and it’s worse than ghosts. The structurally playful, puzzle-box construction has earned comparisons to Hitchcock and Black Mirror–style genre-bending, with critics noting how it weaponizes audience assumptions about suburban safety and respectable men in authority. R.L. Terry ReelView+1
The movie isn’t perfect—some have pointed out plot holes and logic wobbles once all the cards are on the table—but it’s so committed to its bag of tricks that you mostly forgive it. It helps that Adam Randall directs with a steady hand, balancing domestic drama, police procedural, supernatural fake-out, and home-invasion thriller without losing the thread. The drone shots circling the Harper home, mocked by at least one reviewer, feel almost thematically appropriate: the camera itself becomes another unseen watcher, hovering like an indifferent god or a very nosy neighbor. Roger Ebert+1
For a film that only grossed around $1.2 million on a $5 million budget, I See You has quietly built a second life on streaming, where its twisty structure and “wait, WHAT?” midpoint are perfectly suited to late-night viewing and instant rewatching. Wikipedia+2Couch Reviews+2 It’s the kind of thriller that makes you feel clever for connecting dots—right before it pulls back and shows you the rest of the picture you didn’t know you were looking at.
In the end, I See You is less about jump scares and more about the horror of not really seeing the people you live with: the son quietly imploding, the wife drowning in guilt, the stranger in your ceiling, and the husband who’s built his entire identity on a lie so rotten it infects everything around him. It’s stylish, mean, occasionally bonkers, and far smarter than its modest footprint suggests.
Just don’t be surprised if, after watching it, you start closing your closet door all the way… and checking behind it twice. After all, the movie’s title isn’t just a threat. It’s a reminder: someone’s always watching—and it might not be the person you’re afraid of.
