Behind Her Eyes is a British supernatural psychological thriller created by Steve Lightfoot. The series is based on the 2017 novel of the same name by Sarah Pinborough. It stars Simona Brown, Eve Hewson, Tom Bateman and Robert Aramayo.
Suspension of disbelief is an extremely important quality to hold on to while watching Behind Her Eyes. The limited series, a tight 6-episodes-long, is crisp and edge-of-your-seat thrilling, with a chance of threesomes looming hot and heavy at every corner. Although it never gets to the point, that miniscule chance is enough to keep everyone invested, along will the wonderment of what the actual f*ck is going on.
Behind Her Eyes is a simple thriller in the first few epsiodes – it’s difficult to understand who is lying and who is telling the truth. As you go deeper and the waters become murkier, the themes, too, get into supernatural territory. For a supernatural nut like me, this works wonders. However, skeptics might find this a bit hard to believe – and rightly so. thus, I started off the review with the call to suspend your disbelief.
Behind Her Eyes follow Louise, whose chance encounter with an enigmatic David at a bar becomes awkward when she realises that he’s her boss the next day. Conveniently, she bumps into his wife, Adele, as well. As passions and friendships flare, Louise realises that there’s more than meets the eyes in David and Adele’s life, and the truth is truly shocking.
Supernatural stuff aside, the thrilling parts of the series are extremely well done. The series does not waste time behind frivolous stuff and does not try to pad the runtime with things that do not matter or add anything to the story. There’s a lot of back and forth when it comes to Adele’s life and her relationship with her best friend, Rob. So you spend some time in the past along with the present. The shifting dynamic between Adele and David, while you try to figure out whom to trust goes on till episode 6, when you get to know the entire truth. By then, it’s too late – you’re too invested in the characters and it’s going to hurt.
The supernatural stuff, on the other hand, is quite fun to watch. The aspect shown here is something I’ve always been fascinated with, and the series uses it in a good and tight way. We don’t see many stupid things taking place and it mostly sticks to its own rules. The way they go about it seems quite simple and easy, but then I’ve never been through something like that, so I wouldn’t know.
Performances across the board are great. The principle characters including Simona Brown, Eve Hewson and Tom Bateman are absolutely wonderful and make this believable with their forceful performances. Each of their characters get equal focus and we also get enough backstories to understand what’s going on here. Rob’s character, played by Robert Aramayo, is absolutely chilling and the last episode is testament to that. I won’t spoil it for you, but again, suspension of disbelief is vital to enjoy something like this.
The thing with Behind Her Eyes that drew me in the most was the fact that I wasn’t sure what to expect from it in the first episode or two. The first episode, more so, is used to set up Louise and showing that she’s just another very normal woman who loves her son and is trying to move on from a 3-year-old divorce. However, the moment Adele and David gets into the picture, it’s still extremely difficult to understand what to expect because both of these characters are even more mysterious. Adele is icy and David is awkward, however, both are hiding something and you bet you will want to know exactly what.
Summing up: Behind Her Eyes
Behind Her Eyes is intriguing, fun and absolutely bingeable. The series holds on to the thrill throughout its 6-episode runtime and there’s a lot of unpacking to do when the time comes. The actors are great with their characters and they’re as much a reason to watch this series as the story.
Behind Her Eyes is streaming on Netflix.
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