In Your Eyes

In Your Eyes is interesting not just because it comes from the pen of Joss Whedon, a man who never seems to stop working, but also because of the way it has been distributed, forgoing the standard cinema release and instead going straight onto Video on Demand via Vimeo.  It’s a paranormal romance that see’s Brin Hill adapting the Whedon script and stars Zoe Kazan and Michael Stahl-David.

The film follows the lives of Rebecca (Kazan) and Dylan (Stahl-David) two individuals who live on different sides of the country and appear to have nothing in common, despite the fact they are telepathically linked.  This allows them to communicate and see through each others eyes, which quickly leads to them forming a friendship and unsurprisingly a bit more.

It’s a very un-Whedonesque tale with his usual deaths replaced by affection and love and all in all it works.  It is true that once you take the paranormal element out of the story, it is a pretty by the numbers romance and the conclusion is unlikely to blow your mind, but there is a sweetness at the centre of this film which makes up for all of that.  The two central characters have been repeatedly beaten down by the world and those around them and as their friendship grows you can’t help but fall for them and hope that they end up together.

It feel’s like a strange thing to review but it is worth saying I did have some issues with Vimeo.  At the start it was jumpy and a few times I had to refresh the page because the video had just stopped.  If you have a particularly bad Internet connection it might be worth waiting for it in a different format.  In saying that I do believe that for this kind of movie video on demand is the future, although it can be done better than this.

In Your Eyes is not a classic movie, but it’s an incredibly enjoyable one that it is difficult not to fall for.  With Joss Whedon well on his way to becoming one of the biggest directors in the world, it’s always a delight when he lends his name to these smaller projects and Brin Hill does an admirable job in bringing his script to life.