I Still See You

After the explosion of a research laboratory in Chicago known as The Event that kills a great number of people, the living people cohabit with ghosts known as remnant especially near the ground zero. Ten years after The Event, the teenager Veronica Calder (Bella Thorne) has classes about the remnant laws with her teacher August Bittner (Dermot Mulroney). She also coexists peacefully with the remnants until the day she is threatened by the mysterious remnant Brian (Thomas Elms). She seeks help with her schoolmate Kirk Lane (Richard Harmon), who is an expert in remnant, and they need to the Chicago's No-Go Zone, a place forbidden to humans, to learn secrets about The Event and the killer.

"I Still See You" is a surprisingly good supernatural thriller with an original ghost story. The screenplay does not have the usual clichés of the genre and the acting is good. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

I watched this at home on DVD from my local library. My wife chose to skip, not her kind of movie.

Bella Thorne is the main character, high schooler Veronica (Ronnie) Calder. Every morning at the breakfast table she witnesses exactly the same thing, her father sitting there, reading a newspaper, smiling and nodding to her, then his image dissolves and disappears. The title is a reference to this.

Some ten years earlier in the Chicago area an incident during experiments with a heavy particle accelerator causes a flash that killed hundreds, including Ronnie's dad, and their images return every day.

But that just sets the story up. The meat of it becomes the search for a person who may be a serial killer, and may be tracking Ronnie so that an "exchange" can be made to bring someone else back from the dead.

It is a pretty interesting take on the ghost theme and I enjoyed watching the movie, although I will not count it among my favorites.

I don't agree with the reviews that say that the script tries to pack too much in, I really don't get that criticism. It's fine. The problem that brought this movie down from a 7:00 to 6:00 for me is a disappointingly common plot development toward the end, such a cliche that it pulls the movie down from good to just fair. I haven't read the novel it's based on but I suspect the same thing happens there. If that's correct you can't blame the script for following the novel.

My own rule of thumb is that a 6 is a decently entertaining movie and a 7 is worth watching more than once. I probably will never watch this movie again but it was an entertaining way to spend 100 minutes.

I really liked underlying premise of this movie, specifically that the millions of people killed by a cataclysmic event became ghosts, or remnants. In addition to this novel concept, the acting was good, and the characters' motivations and actions were logical and intelligent. In fact, I can't think of a single instance where extremely poor decision-making was used to advance the plot, setting this apart from most horror/thriller movies.

On the minus side, there were a number of plot holes and cheesy bits. Although they weren't bad enough to ruin the movie, there were enough of them that I can only give it a 7/10.

Overall, it was an enjoyable movie, and I would recommend it.

It was going so well until an hour in, then you hear one line and understand the writer couldn't think of anything better. It then just follows the normal attributes to this type of film. However the acting is good and it is constantly moving so give it a go, in fact I've just added an extra mark as I was being to critical.