The Unseen

Director and writer Gary Sinyor’s The Unseen is an impressive looking tale about tragedy, psychological manipulation with a touch of horror.

Gemma and Will (Jasmine Hyde and Richard Flood) are completely devastated when their young son is killed in an accident. This cataclysmic trauma affects both Gemma – who blames herself – is affected by temporary blindness caused by panic attacks, while Will thinks he can hear his son’s voice, or that he is a presence in the house. Into this situation comes Paul (Simon Cotton) an ex pharmacist who suggests they go to his Lake District home to get away from things.

The place and location are beautiful; just what they were looking for and so they try to settle. Will’s voices disappear which rather than calm him has the opposite effect. Convinced that his son’s ‘presence’ is back home in London he leaves thus leaving Paul and Gemma alone with the former clearly having ulterior motives.

So that’s the basic premise and as it slowly unfolds so this writer started to lose interest in any of the characters, and what happened to them. Hyde and Flood are ok as husband and wife but fail to elicit much sympathy for their terrible situation, while Cotton just feels creepy from his first appearance. It’s not entirely predictable but you do get a feeling that you know where this is going to go, so that drags it.

For all the scenery and stylishly rugged location shooting it has the aspect of a BBC Sunday evening play, rather than a film. It is fairly slow and feels overlong. The main problem however is that it’s unengaging, and crucially when you can’t warm to any of the characters involved it makes it a difficult film to watch.