Director – Zeshaan Younus – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 84m
*
A woman mourns her sister, dead in circumstances which remain far from clear – impenetrable drama is out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 1st
NSFW
Parker (Renee Gagner from Gazer, Ryan J. Sloan, 2024) sits on a chair and delivers a monologue. Apparently she’s doing an audition for an acting part. Either way, she rambles on about being finger-fucked in a car by a man who would later be turned to red mist as he served abroad with the military. The sequence, which consists of one unbroken, locked-off camera shot, is unlikely to engage you on any level. And it’s typical of everything else about this lacklustre effort.
In the middle comes a sequence in which car headlights appear in a night of pouring rain, and a series of characters gather outside a warehouse. One of them pulls out a gun. Shots are heard to be fired, by which time the picture has cut to a sunset landscape so you could be looking at the end of this mysterious meeting that looks like it isn’t going to go well, or it might be unrelated. It’s hard to tell.
Parker’s beloved sister Indiana (Rosie McDonald) has been killed and Parker is struggling to get over it. She drinks in a bar where she must fend off a particularly unpleasant, toxic male.
Clocking in at a mere 84 minutes, the whole thing feels far, far longer; indeed, it feels interminable. The lighting, such as it is, makes every moment look unattractive; visually, it’s consistently drab: there is nothing whatsoever to hold the viewer’s attention. As for the editing, shots are held on the screen far longer than they have any right to be: your inner editor will be constantly screaming, “cut, cut”, but to no avail. (Something you don’t get in the film’s trailer, where the shots are indeed pruned down to suggest a filmic experience that’s pregnant with meaning. A meaning that is absent from the actual film itself.)
Touted as a ghost story with a noir edge, it’s closer to an audience endurance test possessed of little if any merit.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
I’ve Seen All I Need To See is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, May 1st.
Trailer: