Do You See Me? I had assumed would be a slasher film, it shares similarities with that genre, particularly with Halloween. This follows the old adage of less is more, with the creepy clown stalking the protagonist rarely shown, but unfortunately is shown so very little that this Corbin Timbrook (The Belly of the Beast, Blood Ranch) directed and co-written indie horror felt like it wasted whatever potential it had.
Emily (Rya Meyers) is an ordinary woman who one day begins to receive disturbing messages from an unknown number that read 'Do You See Me' which is then typically followed up by the woman then spotting a creepy clown (Robert Ambrose) somewhere in the distance watching her. She contacts the police, but due to only herself ever seeing the clown, and her not keeping hold of any of the 'gifts' it leaves her, no one is really sure what to believe. As the days draw closer and closer to Halloween, the stalking increases, with Emily starting to fear for her life.
I get keeping the antagonist at arms length and rarely sighted as a way to build up tension, but this goes far too far with this concept. In total, in over eighty two minutes, the clown appears on screen for a literal total of about two minutes, and that includes the prologue where the clown kills his one and only on-screen victim. Many of the sightings appear in nightmare sequences the main character has. I figure that prologue was a compromise to actually make it seem like there was a genuine threat going on, but due to the rest of the movie this part felt almost unrelated. It also gets in the way of the mid-point notion that it is possible the creepy clown is all in her head. That might have been an interesting idea but the viewer knows that isn't the case.
It is hard to talk too much about the clown as it is on screen for so little time. When it isn't texting Emily (as an aside, she has the most sinister text message noise possible, I figured the clown had somehow made her phone make that noise, but no, it appears that is her own choice!), it stands around staring for seconds at a time. The Halloween comparisons are made here, with quite a few first person perspective shots of the clown watching Emily while hidden. I had expected this would lead up to a terrifying conclusion, but when the horror finally gets closer to home for the protagonist, I noticed that there was just four minutes of run time left before the end credits appeared, and what is shown in that time also included an epilogue scene!
I spent far too much of the movie expecting something more clever from this than it actually was. There are plenty of suspects as to who the clown could be, from Emily's jerk ex-husband Randy (Phillip Boyd), to oddball gym member Taylor (Taylor Piedmonte) and some weird neighbours. I even began to suspect it could be her ex-detective father's former partner, as the detective investigating the case mentions he used to work with her father, but this is never verified as that character is never shown on screen despite being around. Too much time is spent establishing that the protagonist is being stalked, but the threat not ramping up until far too late. I would have had the clown make an appearance properly much sooner into the movie than here, where his eventual inclusion almost felt like an afterthought.
Do You See Me? is good at ramping up the tension, but it squanders the potential and feels like it ran out of time to give a satisfying conclusion. There is far too much treading water, with the escalation coming far too late. For what you see of him, the clown had a suitably disturbing look to it, but did feel wasted, leading to a feeling of frustration that the story never really got going properly before it ended.
SCORE:
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