Exclusive: Director Talks Psychedelic Horror I Can See You!
Johnny Butane
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Chances are, unless you pay really close attention to the site and are able to remember every single news story we do, you’re probably not familiar with Graham Reznick’s I Can See You, one of the latest films to come out of Larry Fessenden’s Scareflix label. But that’s all right cause I’m here to school you.
While visiting the set for Ti West’s House of the Devil a few weeks back (full set report soon), I met Reznick for the first time and got to chatting with him about his directorial debut. First the nuts and bolts, i.e., what the hell is I Can See You about?
”It’s about three guys who are starting an advertising company that go out in the woods to get material for a pitch for the re-branding of a window cleaner, bang out ideas, get photographs, that sort of stuff,” Reznick told me. ”There’s a love triangle, a mysterious disappearance, and one of the guys starts to unravel. As the film goes on, we see the events more and more from his perspective, and that perspective gets more and more twisted. It’s filled will all sorts of sidesteps from reality…”
One look at the I Can See You poster will give you a good indication of just how twisted that perception really becomes. It kinda hurts to look at, no? Reznick was smart and took full advantage of the freedom granted him by Fessenden and the other producers to make the movie he wanted to make. ”I wanted to do something that I could break rules with and tell a story in a more abstract way than I would ever get to do again. I do have some things to say, thematically, about being a young professional and all that, but for me the way the story would be told was far more interesting, the different techniques I could try without being shot down. In a way it was very experimental. Some things worked, some things didn’t, but I learned from it.”
I Can See You had its beginnings when he and Ti West, whose films Reznick has done sound design for since The Roost, decided they wanted to pitch a movie from each of them to direct that began with the simple premise “three guys go into the woods”. ”Ti’s was Trigger Man, which was about three guys who go into the woods and get shot at; it’s a very realistic, verite approach. I Can See You is very psychedelic and psychological,” Reznick explained.
It’s only screened one time, in New York City, and Reznick said that since then the film has changed, but overall he was happy with the crowd’s reaction. ”I was actually happy with how many laughs it got; there’s a lot of very awkward comedy in it, and I was worried some might not get it. There was probably an appropriate amount of people who were perplexed, too, but overall the people who I thought would get it, got it.”
So where is I Can See You now? ”The film is just about done, submitted to a few festivals, and we’re just hoping someone grabs it,” Reznick continued. ”Larry [Fessenden] helps a lot with festivals and distro, when he can, and right now he’s very involved in getting it out there and drumming up interest.”
That’s a good sign that we’ll hopefully be seeing it at more than one of the upcoming summer film festivals (of which Fantasia is still my favorite), so of course we’ll be keeping you guys in the loop and let you know as soon as we hear more.
Check out the I Can See You trailer below, and learn more about the film by hitting up its official website!
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