Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you a thriller,
mystery film from 2018, titled I Still See You. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care.
In the city of Chicago an accident known as The Event happens.
A large particle collider in Ashburn Laboratories explodes and kills everyone in the city,
so now Chicago has become a no-go zone. This Event has a big impact on the world as well: now every
house has a panic room and, most importantly, the ghosts of the people that died during The
Event are appearing all over the place. They call these ghosts "remnants" or "rems", and there are
some laws that reign over their behavior: they aren't sentient, just projections of the past;
they can't alter their imagery - they're stuck in small loops that repeat each day for just a couple
of minutes before they disappear; and lastly, they can't affect the real world. Ten years later,
there's a rumor going around that new rems are showing up, but the government denies it.
In Jewel City, fifty miles from Chicago, Teenage girl Veronica Calder has survived The Event but
sadly, she lost her father Robert. However, his remnant shows up every morning at the table,
but her mother Anna refuses to acknowledge him. Later at school, Veronica is having a class about
rems by August Bittner. She asks him why it is said that rems can only come from victims of
The Event when new ones are showing up, like the ghost girl currently in the classroom,
but Mr. Bittner doesn't have an answer. During lunch, Veronica's attention keeps falling on Kirk,
an antisocial boy that is obsessed with rems. He spends all day hunched over his notebook,
and everyone knows he was expelled from his last school but nobody knows why.
When the sun sets, Veronica decides to spend the evening ice skating at the lake and remember all
the good times she spent here with her dad. The next morning, after she's done showering,
Veronica finds a new rem in her bathroom, and the shock makes her fall. It's a young man that stares
at the mirror, and right before disappearing, he raises his hand as if trying to write something.
To Veronica's surprise, he does: the word "run" appears in the mirror for a few seconds as well.
Later during class, she's too distracted to pay attention, and her classmates call her out when
they notice something very particular: her ear is bleeding. The school nurse checks Veronica and
finds nothing, so she decides to try to talk to Mr. Bittner about this weird rem in her bathroom.
Mr. Bittner invites Veronica to come to his house after school, and there Veronica meets
his daughter Eva, who ignores them. Veronica tells Mr. Bittner what she saw in the mirror, but
Mr. Bittner doesn't believe her. Remnants can't affect the real world, and Veronica had fallen,
so Mr. Bittner thinks she had a concussion and was imagining things. Later in the evening,
Veronica waits at the bathroom to see if Brian shows up, but nothing happens. The following day,
Veronica decides to follow Kirk around because his obsession may have the answers she needs.
She finds him inside a tunnel a bunch of fish rem come out of - Kirk counts these fish,
making note that every month there are more of them. Veronica calls him a Truther and asks for
his help with the bathroom rem, offering to do his paper in return. Kirk only accepts if
she tells him why he cares so much, and Veronica confesses she thinks the rem may want to hurt her.
Later at school, they begin discussing a possible plan and Veronica calls the rem Brian without
realizing what she just said until Kirk points it out. Veronica doesn't know how she suddenly
learned the rem's name, it just popped up in her head. To find out who this rem used to be in life,
they need to take a picture of him to get them started. Common cameras can't do that,
so they ask a member of the science club to help. Actual spectrographic lenses are super expensive,
but this boy knows how to imitate the effect with just a few household tools. Veronica and Kirk
install the machine in the bathroom and wait for Brian to show up. When they hear a weird noise,
Veronica goes downstairs to check and finds the reflection of a man in the mirror.
After noticing something moving in the corner of her eyes, she runs back to Kirk for help, but when
they come downstairs again, they only find Anna. Veronica tries to think of some excuse to tell her
mom, but at that moment, Kirk notices the time and rushes back to the bathroom, so Veronica follows
him closely. Brian does show up and Kirk manages to take a picture of him before things get weird:
Brian's face begins to rot and then he turns around, jumping them at the same time the
lightbulb explodes, causing him to disappear. The next day, Kirk uses the picture to find out
who Brian is. It turns out that four years ago, Brian abducted and killed the pastor's daughter,
Mary. Veronica and Kirk go to see the pastor to ask her some questions, but she knows only the
basics. Brian had been stalking Mary around the campus, and one day he approached her there. After
an argument, Brian convinced her to go with him, and that was the last time Mary was seen alive.
The police found Brian in a motel the next day after they found Mary, but Brian had already
ended things for himself. Veronica and Kirk begin researching Brian. They come to the conclusion he
wasn't from around here, since Jewel City is a small place and nobody knew him - probably Mary
hadn't known who he was either. The day Mary went missing was the day before her birthday, February
29th aka leap day, which matches Veronica's. The duo is doing this research in the library,
where a mysterious shadow watches them without them noticing. When said shadow disappears,
the lights flicker and Veronica accidentally drops her notebook. As she picks it up, she finds
the word "run" written all over its pages over and over, but she didn't put them there. Later,
Kirk is called into the principal's office to be scolded for harassing the pastor. Kirk tells him
it's for a school project, but the principal doesn't believe him. Meanwhile, Veronica is
at the school's basketball game, worried because Kirk isn't showing up or answering her messages.
The principal is there though, and he leaves through the stairs when he gets a text message.
During the game, Veronica begins seeing Brian appear in the middle of the crowd,
and then in a room across the court. After failing to approach him in the stands, Veronica
starts crossing the court to get to him, too distracted to notice she's interrupting the game.
When she finally snaps out of it, something very disturbing happens: the body of the principal
falls through the roof. In the evening, Kirk visits Veronica to share a worry of his: he had
told the principal the real reason they talked to the pastor and the principal had promised to help,
but now he's dead. Kirk is sure these two things are connected, but Veronica thinks that's a
stretch. When Kirk finds her ice skates, Veronica explains they used to belong to her dad and shares
her last memory of him. The day of The Event, she yelled at Robert and told him she didn't love him.
On top of that, Robert usually took the train to work, but when he was late, he would take the car.
That morning, he was late because of his argument with Veronica, so he took the car and was on the
freeway when The Event happened. If he had taken the train, the explosion wouldn't have reached
him so Veronica feels his dad's death is her fault, that's why she's never been to his grave.
Kirk isn't doing much better on family matters: he never cried for his dad,
and the reason why he tracks rems is that Kirk's waiting for his father's ghost to show up, because
so far he hasn't. During their chat, Veronica and Kirk almost kiss, but they're interrupted by Anna,
who offers Kirk the sofa bed for him to crash because it's too late to travel and the roads
are icing over. Later that night, Veronica finds Brian at her window, trying to reach for her.
She steps back and falls on a layer of ice that suddenly breaks, making her fall into the lake.
In the water, Veronica sees two female ghosts, and after a series of strange visions,
she wakes up on her bed, understanding it all had been a nightmare. In the morning,
Anna tells Veronica that she'll be leaving for an interview in Overton on the 28th, which upsets
Veronica because her mom will miss her birthday. When Robert's rem shows up as usual, Kirk notices
something very strange: the newspaper the ghost is holding is from a date after his death.
There's an article about the disappearances and deaths of two girls, Emma and Claire, so
Kirk writes the details down while coming to the conclusion that Robert is trying toward Veronica.
They search for some details online and find out the girls went missing on leap day one year after
the other. Claire's sister is still around, so the duo goes to see her. She tells them that
Brian was Claire's boyfriend and she was obsessed with him - so obsessed in fact that she moved to
Chicago shortly after meeting him. When she mentions that Claire's rem shows her death,
Veronica and Kirk don't hesitate to go to see it, even if it means getting inside the no-go zone.
When they arrive in Chicago, they find the lake from Veronica's dream. But the most shocking
discovery is seeing the huge amount of rems around the city that won't disappear after a few seconds.
Kirk theorizes that the energy that brings them to this world must be stronger here because it's
ground zero, so this allows the rems to have longer loops. Suddenly, a group of real people
shows up - just a bunch of thugs drinking and being annoying. Kirk pushes Veronica against the
wall and kisses her, pretending they're rems, which convinces the thugs to leave them alone,
including the one that almost uses a knife on them as a test. Afterward, they go to the address
Claire's sister had given them and discover it's the lab where The Event happened. A man at the
entrance charges them to see the infamous rem of the dying girl, and as they go downstairs,
Veronica and Kirk see ghosts of all kinds from the times this building wasn't a lab yet, including
the girls from Veronica's dream. Eventually they make it to a room filled with normal people that
are there to see the rem. Claire's ghost shows up happily chatting with someone they can't see,
which indicates she knew her attacker. Suddenly Claire's being thrown around and she tries to
escape by climbing a staircase, but when she makes it to the top, the attacker asphyxiates her and
the rem disappears. Among the crowd, Kirk notices the head of the experiment that caused The Event,
Doctor Martin Steiner, and calls his name. Not wanting to be found, Steiner runs away, so Kirk
and Veronica go after him until they corner him in an alley. Steiner pulls a gun on the teens,
but Veronica doesn't let him intimidate her and tells him to shoot, since not having answers to
protect herself is the same as being dead. This makes Steiner accept to tell them his story as
he takes them back inside. Back when bombs went off in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the shadows of
the dying people were seared into the walls for all time. These echoes we leave after death can
become something more, like a doorway that could allow the dead to communicate with the living.
Steiner's research was about trying to create one of these doorways, so they would bring patients
to the brink of death and back. But the closer they got, the more dangerous it became, and the
day of The Event, instead of making a door, they tore a massive hole. Brian was Steiner's brilliant
assistant, but something broke in him after The Event, so when Claire died, Steiner was sure he
did it. The girls that died afterward were part of Brian's attempt at achieving spectral transference
with the intention to bring Claire back in these girls' bodies. Steiner also confirms that the rem
laws they're taught at school are lies, and that there's a connection among all Brian's victims:
they share Claire's birthday, which is leap day just like Veronica's. Kirk steals a photograph
of the old lab while Veronica promises they won't say anything, but Steiner can't take
the burden of truth anymore and uses his gun to end things. The next day, Veronica and Kirk
go back to school while discussing options to keep Veronica safe until her birthday is over. However,
the school administrators are waiting for them to make Kirk open his locker, only to
find a gun inside. Kirk swears it isn't his, but he's taken away anyway. Desperate and afraid,
Veronica goes to Mr. Bittner for help, who finally believes her because he's talked to the pastor,
he also reveals that Kirk was expelled from his last school because they found a gun on him.
After hearing the story about Steiner, Mr. Bittner thinks running away won't help, so he gets an
idea: they will cover the panic room at Veronica's place with lead lining, which supposedly prevents
rems from entering. The following day, Kirk tries to talk to Veronica because she's been avoiding
his calls. But Veronica isn't sure she can trust him anymore, even when he confesses that he did
have a gun at his previous school, but that had been for himself, not to hurt anyone. Veronica
tells Kirk to leave before she and Bittner get the room ready so she can hide there. Meanwhile, Anna
is away on her job interview, but the people at the company tell her nobody ever called her. Kirk
is researching the picture he stole from Steiner and discovers that Bittner used to be work at the
lab too, but he can't warn Veronica because her phone doesn't have a signal inside the panic room.
Instead, he drives to Bittner's house to confirm his suspicions: Eva is a rem that died on ground
zero, so she has a very long loop, and now Bittner is planning to bring her back in Veronica's body.
Speaking of Bittner, he finds Kirk outside and knocks him out, then takes him away to bury him
alive. Afterward, Bittner goes back to Veronica's house, pretending to protect her. However,
Veronica suddenly remembers the tools they had used to take Brian's picture and realizes this
is a trap. Veronica pushes Bittner and runs out of the room, but Bittner quickly catches up with
her and grabs her by the hair as he confesses everything he did for the sake of his daughter.
He had been the one to kill all the girls; he also faked Anna's interview, put the gun in Kirk's
locker, and killed both Brian and the principal. Brian had taken the girls away with the intention
to protect them, but Bittner had found them anyway. Bittner puts his hands around Veronica's
neck but gets distracted by Robert's rem appearing nearby. Veronica takes the chance and grabs one
of her skates from under the couch to hurt Bittner and push him off before running away.
Eventually, she makes it to the frozen lake, so when Bittner catches her from behind,
Veronica kicks the ice until it breaks and they both fall in the water. Bittner continues to try
to kill Veronica, but suddenly, two rems show up: Brian, who helps Veronica reach the surface, and
Mary, who grabs Bittner and pulls him down until he drowns. Brian disappears after Veronica thanks
him for his help. Unfortunately, the ice is too slippery for Veronica to hold on properly and get
out of the freezing water, so she begins thinking about her dad while waiting for death to come.
At that moment, Kirk shows up and helps her out, promising more help is on the way. The reason why
he was able to escape is quite amazing: the rem of his dad finally showed up and dug the dirt out
of the grave. Veronica returns to her normal life without her dad's rem appearing anymore,
which gives her the courage she needed to finally visit Robert's grave. Afterward, she and Kirk
agree they must find a way to tell the world the truth while Bittner's rem watches them from afar.