Joss Whedon's In Your Eyes Tries Something A Little Different

Last week Joss Whedon's new writing endeavor, In Your Eyes, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. A day later, they put it online for anyone who had five bucks to watch at their leisure. I thought that was kind of a cool idea. So I watched this one at home.

While I'm curious to find out how the sales have done so far, at the moment my mind is more so on the contents of the actual film. It's sort of sci-fi, sort of fantasy, mostly just bizarre love story. And for a low budget concept, Brin Hill did manage to milk Joss' pages for everything they were worth. In Your Eyes is like watching a couple crazy people wander around for an hour forty in a world that doesn't accept them only to be justified by their own recognition that they are completely sane and everyone else is wrong. Really though, the whole thing is surprisingly simple at heart.

Sharing a bond with another person in the regular day to day can be tough as it is. So just imagine if you were connected by something deeper... if you could see through that other person's eyes and talk to them even though your miles away without need of a phone... if you were literally in their head any time you wanted to be, and so were they. Okay, so it's not the most explosive concept Joss has ever concocted. But his script still carries that classic wit and those dire stakes (not to be confused with Buffy stakes) that made me fall in love with his work so many years ago. I really do respect Joss Whedon's decisions these days, because he's finally put himself in a place to essentially put all of his work out there in some medium or another. Most writers would kill for that opportunity. And obviously, while the advent of The Avengers certainly helped his cause, he was already playing around with new media and the opportunity to be free with his work... just look at Dr. Horrible.

So, of course, I enjoyed sitting at home and watching Brin Hill interpret Joss's words. He did a solid job for a relatively new director. And the actors certainly bit for him. After experiencing the awkwardness of Much Ado About Nothing, I was quite reticent about taking on another low budget piece from this team, but this was something else.

The actors clearly cared... both Zoe Kazan and Michael Stahl-David brought their game... and for a movie where the majority of the their time is spent talking to nothing, they certainly made it feel like something more (then again, perhaps that just comes with being on a movie set). The soundtrack was at times awkward, and occasionally I felt like certain relationships were oversimplified (okay, more than occasionally). But the concept may have required that second note in order to function at all. I mean, it is a weird thing to put on film.

At the end of the day, In Your Eyes is just a solid movie. Not perfect, but still worth your time. If you wanna check it out you can right here.