Tuesday, February 24, 2015

In Your Eyes (2014)

"In Your Eyes" - Two strangers... one in New Hampshire and one in New Mexico... are telepathically linked.  The nervous and timid Becky (Zoey Kazan, "What If") has a controlling jerk for a husband.  Down-on-his-luck Dylan (Michael  Stahl-David, "New Girl") is trying to escape his small-town life of crime.  The only bright thing about their lives is their link to each other.  An emotional bond is formed...  could it be love?

This independent film written and produced by Joss Whedon and directed by Brin Hill is a semi-sweet supernatural love story that's fairly unique.

Their first experience of being linked together is when Becky has a sledding accident around age 9.  She hits a tree and is knocked out cold.  Dylan is at school at the time and is also knocked out.  (I still don't understand why she was sledding on a school day, but whatever.)  This is also where we first meet Dylan's two "friends", the lunkheads who get him mired in a life of petty thievery as an adult.

Fast-forward maybe fifteen years and Becky is married to a doctor.  Her husband cares, but he's kind of a controlling, arrogant jerk.  He thinks of Becky as more of a pet or a show-dog than a wife.

Dylan is living in a messy trailer and fielding visits from his parole officer.  He's got work at a car-wash, but longs to better himself.  But he's an ex-con... he doesn't have a lot of options.

When the two of them re-link, they're both at a very low point in their lives, though it doesn't seem like it on the outside.  They can talk to each other and see what the other one is seeing.  It begins a kind of "pen-pal" relationship that brightens and enriches their lives.  The problem is they have to talk out loud to be heard, so everyone thinks they're talking to themselves all the time.  Dylan gets fired.  It's unclear whether Becky's husband really thinks she's having an affair, or that he thinks she's crazy, but he ends up forcibly committing her to an asylum.  When Dylan "sees" this, he sells his truck for cash then steals a car (tell me how *that* makes sense) to get to a bus stop, takes the bus to the airport, then steals a car to get to Becky.

Okay, I get that he might not have had the cash for gas for that giant truck of his, and his parole officer could have tracked him with it, but even I know there's a better way to handle it than that.  Why not just trade for a cheaper car with better milage plus cash then switch plates or something?  I think Joss needs to do some actual crime or get some ex-con friends so he can think like a criminal a little better.

Their concurrent escape scenes were well done.  I was a little disappointed in the ending... not for how it turned out, but because we don't learn quite as much about their lives "after" as I would like.  Trying not to spoil it here, but it would be nice to know where they ended up and how they managed their lives.

I give this movie four and a half out of five.  I really disliked the music, which is bad when it's highlighted in the story twice.  I was super-uncomfortable with Becky being forcibly committed, and as I said, I would have liked to know more about the aftermath.  But it's a sweet love story under all its supernatural trappings.

Only three LOLs at well-timed lines, but this is not meant to be funny.  I'm currently working on a complex cabled afghan for a gift so I ended up putting down the needles permanently with a half-hour to go when it seemed like things were going to get intense.  It's a lot of "getting to know you" talking during the first two-thirds, so it's pretty good for crafting right up until our heroes end up in crisis.

The DVD is $14 but unless you *have* to own everything Joss Whedon is involved with I'd skip the purchase and just rent it or catch it on Netflix.  It's good, but I'm not sure it's something I'd watch more than once.  Your milage may vary.


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