Topical, mediocre ‘Sightless’ won’t vault Madelaine Petsch beyond ‘Riverdale’
Netflix
“Riverdale” can barely contain Madelaine Petsch’s scene-stealing charisma. But no one would watch that show and say, “Give that actress a role where all she can do is look sad, then scared, then repeat.” The world also doesn’t need a psychological thriller that practically stamps “NOTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS” over the opening credits.
What we do need, and will certainly take in an otherwise contrived and disposable type of Sunday-afternoon time-passer, is an examination of toxic masculinity and the power of seeing the world through feminist eyes rather than something more selfish and obsessed.
“Sightless” opens with its most haunting image: from behind, we see Ellen (Petsch), having lost her sight during a vicious, chemical-fueled attack, walk tentatively forward in an empty apartment, out onto a balcony, then climb over the barrier and, finally, let go. We don’t know if this is real but probably suspect writer/director Cooper Karl’s feature debut doesn’t begin by giving away a climactic suicide.
The rest of the movie, set in the month before that first shot, finds Ellen adapting to a new, post-recovery life in which a nurse named Clayton (Alexander Koch), who refers to himself as “the Ferrari of personal care,” is the only person who comes to help her settle into a new apartment in a seemingly under-populated building. Ellen soon can’t get in touch with loved ones or trust her own senses; dripping water feels like blood, a reminder of her own trauma, and she can find no explanation for the regular blaring of a car alarm. Despite a number of background details/red herrings involving Ellen being a child prodigy on the violin and her husband serving 15 years for an apparent Ponzi scheme, “Sightless” doesn’t provide enough to hold onto, though. You mostly spend the draggy 86 minutes waiting for the other shoe to drop, and when it does the answer only creates unresolved questions. There’s suspension of disbelief, and there’s far-fetched nonsense.
Yet where other recent efforts led by “Riverdale” stars were either vapidly dull (Camila Mendes’ “Dangerous Lies”) or annoyingly blunt (Lili Reinhart’s “Chemical Hearts”), “Sightless” taps into dangerous power dynamics and a plenty-relevant examination of how gaslighting creates its own version of the truth. A better filmmaker would have given us some moments in total darkness, allowing us to be as confused and terrified as Ellen is when she can hear something that she can’t see. (There is a nice technique, however, of changing what we see based on her understanding.) There are many movies that have been made about people who are visually impaired, some better (“Wait Until Dark”), some worse (“Seven Pounds”). To an extent “Sightless” sometimes plays like a mashup of “The Invisible Man” and “Rear Window” as Ellen fears for a neighbor she believes is being abused by her husband.
But at a time when millions of people choose perception over fact, any narrative attuned to how identity gets smothered beneath manipulation and the patriarchy deserves to have at least a few of its sirens heard. Actually, the best thing about “Sightless” is its timing: Releasing a movie about separating reality from fiction on the day an honest man replaces a despicable, dishonest one in the White House is high-quality trolling by Netflix.
C
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