Review:
Sophie Scott had plans to be an Olympic skier until she was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease that causes blindness. She now spends her time house/pet-sitting for the wealthy - and stealing and selling their wine for extra cash on top of her sitting fees. Unfortunately, her latest job goes bad and she finds herself in a home invasion situation. Although she's able to call the cops, the house is fairly isolated and it will take a while for them to get there. She somehow has to stay hidden until then, or escape the house. All she has on her side is the See For Me app, which connects blind users with sighted volunteers.
I like the tension and creative use of space that a lot of home invasion stories have, but this is one I might have passed by simply because of its blind main character. The thing that convinced me to give it a shot: the person who plays Sophie, Skyler Davenport, is visually impaired in real life. I hoped that meant Sophie's blindness wouldn't come across as pitiful or gimmicky.
This wasn't quite what I expected it to be. Sophie was not a likeable person for a large chunk of this - at one point, she made a decision that could best be described as "scummy" (and also "stupid"). On the plus side, she knew she wasn't likeable and even admitted one of the more horrible things she'd done to Kelly, the volunteer helping her on the app. That doesn't mean audience members will be inclined to forgive her and fully root for her, though.
The movie's home invasion aspects weren't as good as I'd expected they'd be, and they were also a much smaller portion of the movie than I expected. It didn't help that the last few scenes were really hard to follow, simply because they were lit so badly. Still, this was okay to watch at least once, and even if I had issues with Sophie, it was at least easy to root for Kelly and her efforts to help Sophie.
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