BEHIND HER EYES: Dark, Twisty, and Supernatural

Based on the novel by Sarah Pinborough, created by Steve Lightfoot (Hannibal), the series Behind Her Eyes is a peculiar mix of psychological thriller, drama, and esoteric crime story with supernatural and erotic elements, echoing The Girl on the Train with Emily Blunt or Jordan Peele’s horror Us.

This short, six-episode Netflix series is one of the most-watched titles on the platform in recent days.

Modern-day London. Louise Barnsley (Simona Brown) is a single mother raising her seven-year-old son Adam (Tyler Howitt) and trying to rebuild her life after a divorce that took place three years earlier. She is still searching for happiness, and when she meets a handsome Scot named David (Tom Bateman) in a bar one evening, she decides to spend the night with him.

Although it ends with nothing more than kisses, Louise is enchanted by her new acquaintance – at least until the next day, when she starts a new job as a secretary in the office of a well-known and respected psychiatrist.

She discovers that her new employer is the man she met the night before, Dr. David Ferguson, and on top of that, she learns he is married.

The situation becomes even more awkward when her boss’s enigmatic wife, the beautiful Adele (Eve Hewson), tries to befriend Louise, who, driven by unstoppable curiosity, slowly uncovers the dark pages of Adele’s past and the strange details of her marriage to David. While befriending Adele, Louise is also sleeping with David, keeping her closeness with one secret from the other. We know this pattern well from many other thrillers – some tragedy must eventually happen here.

It is a pleasure to watch both actresses in the lead roles, in contrast to the anemic, sluggish, and perpetually angry Tom Bateman as David. The screen unquestionably belongs to Eve Hewson – Bono’s daughter, the lead singer of U2 – in the role of Adele. She began her acting career as a teenager. She starred alongside Sean Penn in This Must Be the Place and gained popularity in the series The Knick.

In Behind Her Eyes, Hewson is convincing both as the defiant, cheerful teenager with loose hair and as the statuesque, always elegant wife of a respected psychiatrist, with a perfectly trimmed, sleek bob, who can explode at any moment. The series’ plot intertwines threads from the present – the growing friendship between Louise and Adele, Louise’s romance with David, and Adele’s marriage – with the past, which reveals Adele’s former life, particularly her stay in a psychiatric facility.

Although each episode reveals more and more details of the characters’ lives, the series can at times be tedious. However, it is impossible to deny that Behind Her Eyes constantly delivers plot twists that keep the viewer engaged until the very end. Every assumption you make while watching, every solution to the mysterious puzzle you imagine, will turn out to be wrong.

Unfortunately, three-quarters of the way through, Behind Her Eyes unexpectedly shifts from a thriller into a cheap supernatural shocker about esotericism and paranormal phenomena, which immediately declassifies the production and puts it alongside B-class series. Behind Her Eyes undoubtedly aims to shock the viewer, since even the most perceptive cinematic detective will not be able to predict the bizarre ending of this story.

For many, this will certainly be a pleasant surprise, but for me – a disappointment I cannot ignore. Thrillers and crime dramas often require you to turn a blind eye to absurdities in the plot. In the case of the ending of Behind Her Eyes, this is practically impossible, because with the appearance of the supernatural thread, the series completely loses all its charm and becomes difficult to take seriously.