How to deceive the viewer so they like it? The director of the film “Sightless” has the answer.

Conceptually original short films often serve as the basis for feature-length movies. This is exactly what happened with the work of debutant Cooper Karl, who made the film “Sightless” based on his own short, and even landed “Riverdale” star Madeline Petsch for the lead role. So what’s original here, and why is it worth seeing with your own eyes?

Horror without horror

Talented violinist Ellen (Petsch) is attacked by an unknown person (or unknown?!), resulting in the loss of her sight. She tries to adjust to her new life but feels that danger is still nearby.

“Sightless” looks and feels like a genuine horror film. But what scares you here is not jump scares or other genre attributes, but the feeling of defenselessness and the illusory nature of everything around. Madeline Petsch’s character initially finds herself on unequal footing with her tormentor and often has to rely on her imagination. The audience puts themselves in her position, and they too seem to lose their sight along with her. This effect was achieved through a simple but very effective method, but more on that later.

Unfortunately or fortunately, the film’s plot turned out to be naive and somewhat predictable. The dramaturgy also doesn’t shine with particular depth, as the emphasis is clearly on emotions rather than on the complexity of the characters (the actors essentially have nothing to play) or the development of their relationships. But for an entertaining movie — and “Sightless” is 100% guilty pleasure — this is quite enough, so we won’t judge it too harshly.

The magic of cinema in its pure form

The main trump card of Cooper Karl’s film was not Madeline Petsch, but the original visual presentation of the story. The entire action unfolds from the perspective of the main character Ellen, who, as we remember, is blind. And since the girl has to rely solely on her imagination to picture unfamiliar people and any other surroundings, the image on screen is constantly distorted by her sensations. If literature has the device of the “unreliable narrator,” then Karl’s find can well be called an unreliable visual sequence!

This simple trick in terms of execution feels like a breath of fresh air in genre cinema. The intimate story, unfolding within four walls, thanks to it plays with new colors and allows viewers to empathize with the heroine in a completely new way. And why didn’t the creators of “Bird Box,” where the characters also had to move blindly, think of this?!

Is the film “Sightless” worth watching?

“Sightless” is purely a genre film about form, not content. If you want a largely new experience of living through a story, this film won’t disappoint. But you shouldn’t be too demanding of it either. After all, it’s the debut work of a director worth keeping an eye on in the future.

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