Released: 17th February 2021 (Netflix)
Number of Episodes: 6
Certificate: 15
Created by: Steve Lightfoot
Starring: Simona Brown, Tom Bateman and Eve Hewson
The intimate drama often relies heavily on getting the audience invested in characters and then putting them through compelling situations and problem-solving. Aiming to blend strong characters with something more superstitious, Behind Her Eyes falls woefully flat thanks to its muddled story and characters.
Behind Her Eyes starts with the simple Londoner Louise Bardsley (Simona Brown) meeting the psychologist David Ferguson (Tom Bateman) on a night out. What starts as a hidden affair transforms into a bitter resentment triangle with Louise playing David and his odd partner Adele (Eve Hewson) off each other in the process. Clearly there’s something off about Adele and Louise finds herself looking more deeply into her secrets. Often Behind Her Eyes will shift between reality and imaginary landscapes, showing off the stranger side to its story. Unfortunately, this is where things fall apart; the six episodes do a poor job of blending its themes, making for a very disjointed tale. The twists in the final episode feel particularly baffling as it mostly ditches its grounding in favour of out-of-body nonsense. The decisions the characters make for the climax come so far out of left field that they derail the relations between them. Things feel incredibly unbalanced; the show needed to go deeper with both realistic and psychological tones to form a stronger connection between the two.
The cast of Behind Her Eyes is very small and focuses heavily on their inner struggles. Every actor does a really good job despite the non-sensical plot. At first you are on-board with the characters and their individual imperfections; their close relations are very believable, especially between Louise and her son Adam (Tyler Howitt). When they come under some stressful situations, their bond is conveyed brilliantly. The problem is when the duo becomes disconnected in favour of the supernatural. When Adam exits the scene in the fourth and fifth episodes, the more human side of the proceedings disappears. On the other side of the coin, David’s growing anger and frustration is consistently on display from Tom Bateman; this is matched by the erratic behaviour of his wife. Adele’s violent mood swings are well captured by Eve Hewson, but because the narrative shifts so abruptly the extended performance can often feel very jarring. Every actor here is firmly short-changed by a weak script and sloppy pacing; it also doesn’t help that side characters are either put aside or introduced very late in the series.
At least it all looks the part. Whether it’s a classical mansion or basic apartment complex, the settings of Behind Her Eyes are always very well framed. The differing lenses placed into the unfolding events are mostly well implemented, falling in line with the varying tones. Often the lighting is dim and foreboding in the early episodes to represent mental turmoil. Then as things go on, brighter and more vibrant colours take over as Louise starts to control her dreams. The cinematography slowly moves around the environments and while the spiritual elements create a massive narrative disconnect, they are still presented well enough on screen. The soundtrack mostly relies on ambient notes to highlight the inner turmoil and it succeeds at purveying the atmosphere with a sense a mystery. It’s too bad that all this technical prowess is wasted on a weak product.
While at first glance it appears to be a regular drama, the jumbled supernatural elements of Behind Her Eyes really drag it down as a series. It can’t decide whether it wants to be a realistic character study or a more psychological thriller. This clash of ideas makes the show a very lacklustre outing from start to finish.
Rating: 2/5 Stars (Disappointing)
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