Behind Her Eyes: The Ending Makes it All Worthwhile

The Netflix original, Behind Her Eyes, is adapted from the best-selling novel of the same name, written by Sarah Pinborough. Adapted for Netflix by Steve Lightfoot, the miniseries’ four central actors are Simona Brown, Tom Bateman, and Eve Hewson. Released late last month, the story follows single-mother Louise Barnsley (Brown), and her affair with the psychiatrist David Ferguson (Bateman) and her odd relationship with his strange wife, Adele (Hewson).

Behind Her Eyes is a series that will leave you confused about whether it was good or not, if all the facets of it were satisfying in quality or entertainment. It begins slow, the first three episodes a study in patience for the audience. Louise becomes engulfed in the complicated marriage between Adele and David as she starts an affair with him, and a friendship with her. David is charming and frustrated with his marriage. Adele is eerie and lonely. Louise is a bit of them both, frustrated and lonely. None of the characters are extremely compelling, and I felt frustrated watching the story unfold, feeling as if I knew where it was going. In particular, I found David a difficult character to feel any sort of empathy for in the first few episodes, especially as I felt that the show wanted the audience to like and trust him. Overall, none of the fun of the show comes from the characters. In a lot of ways, they’re really only there to push the plot forward, especially Louise who makes increasingly frustrating and poor decisions in the final episodes.

The saving grace of Behind Her Eyes is the ending, and that’s really it. The last two episodes move quickly, and especially in the second to last episode, the audience is meant to think they know the conclusion of the story. Until they don’t. The twist ending is unexpected and interesting, and it turns a lot of boring and static characters into ones that you truly feel sympathy for as you come to understand the tragedy that occurred. Unlike the rest of the story, the end really stuck with me, and it truly made me feel something for these people that I’d spent five hours prior not caring about at all. Though, it’s important to keep in mind that the ending half of the show relies heavily on supernatural elements. One unfair criticism that I’d gleaned from looking through other viewers’ opinions was that they thought the show was a typical psychological thriller, which it’s not.

In terms of technical elements of the show, the acting is fine. It’s not distractingly bad, nor did it have any standout performances. Hewson does well at playing up the mystery of Adele, and Brown managed to make Louise likeable despite some of her odd decisions. There’s light CGI that looks misplaced in the setting of the show, but it’s not too hard to ignore, especially since it serves in delivering the show’s best part, its twist.

I give Behind Her Eyes 2.5 stars out of 5, though I do think it’s worth the watch if you’re bored and want something quick to watch. It’s only a nearly six-hour watchtime, and once again, the ending makes all the underwhelming aspects of the show worth your time.