'See for Me' review: Home invasion thriller turns blind eye to logic

A blind protagonist finds herself in the center of a home invasion in "See For Me," a rickety suspense thriller that attempts to outdo "Don't Breathe" and comes up short of breath. 

Director Randall Okita has a good premise to work with but the story takes several wrong turns, and "See For Me" is filled with holes in logic that take away from its credibility, and more importantly its believability. 

Skyler Davenport, an actress who is legally blind, plays Sophie, an ex-skier who is rendered blind after an accident on the slopes. She is now defiantly self-sufficient, almost to a fault; she is reluctant to accept help from anybody, especially her mother, who attempts to assist with the slightest of tasks and is rebuffed by her barking daughter.

Sophie is making ends meet by taking housesitting jobs, and her side hustle is robbing expensive bottles of wine from said homes and reselling them online. She does this with the assistance of a friend, Cam (Keaton Kaplan), who acts as her eyes through the use of her smartphone's video feature. A fit of conscience causes him to back off their latest score, rendering her on her own at the wooded, upscale home of the recently divorced Debra (Laura Vandervoort), who entrusts Sophie with catsitting duty while she's off celebrating her newfound marital freedom.

When Sophie accidentally locks herself outside the home she's forced to use an app, called See For Me, which acts as her eyes in much the way Cam did, and she connects with Kelly (Jessica Parker Kennedy), an operator (and first person shooter junkie) who assists her in getting back into the house. That night when burglars break into the residence in pursuit of a safe stuffed with cash, Sophie finds herself back on the phone with Kelly, who tries to help her out of the jam she's in and keep her alive through the night.

"See For Me" is on sturdy ground right up until the home invasion, which is where the wheels start to fall off the story. The robbers, who have made plans to steal $7 million in cash from the home's safe (a totally normal amount of money to keep stashed in one's home), don't have any contingency plans in place for a wrinkle in their plan, and have way too difficult a time locating a person using a cellphone and a light to find their way through the darkened house. Sophie's attempts to bargain with the bad guys, as well as the abject failings of local police enforcement, further erode the film's credibility, and Sophie's questionable moral standing makes her an awkward subject in the hero role.      

A fun kind-of "Die Hard" dynamic does build between Sophie and Kelly, with Kelly being the Sgt. Powell to Sophie's John McClane. But the thrills evaporate early from this thriller, as little faults in the script (wouldn't Sophie, who relies on tech, have a backup charger on hand if her phone's battery gets low?) add up to big problems. In 2016, director Fede Álvarez told a similar story in "Don't Breathe," which also placed a blind person at the center of a home invasion plot, and ramped up the tension, fear and dread of the scenario by placing viewers in a state of sensory overload. Sadly, there's nothing to see here.

agraham@detroitnews.com

@grahamorama

'See For Me'

GRADE: C-

Not rated: Violence, language

Running time: 92 minutes

On VOD