ichael Lewis (McCarthy) is a talented architect who is hired to refurbish a beautiful old London hotel, the Arcadia. However, no sooner does Michael step onto the property than strange things begin to happen. He has disturbing visions and he sees a little girl running through the hotel. She asks him simply, "Can you help me?" But before he can find out more, she's gone.
After a late night, Lewis drives through the deserted London streets. An elderly woman (Blackman) suddenly appears in front of his car, and he hits her. As she lies dying on the street, he looks up to find people watching them silently. The woman knows his name, and she talks strangely, as though she knows him. She dies as the ambulance arrives. He looks up to find that the watchers have vanished.
At the police station, Michael learns that the woman was dying of cancer and that the police deem her death to be accidental. He meets Detective Pryce (Amanda Redman), who has been leading the search for a serial killer who has murdered seven children. While at the station, Michael has a vision and he once more sees the little girl from the Arcadia.
Michael feels horrible about the events. But things soon get even stranger when he meets the woman who died. She explains that she had "the sight," and now it's time for her to pass her work along to him. His new job is to help the dead who are stuck in limbo so they can pass on to the afterlife. As he watches her go into the light and up an enormous spiral staircase, he knows his life has just gotten much more complicated.
Ghosts begin to turn up, and Michael discovers there are seven children, including the little girl from the Arcadia, who can't cross over unless he helps find their killer. But this serial killer knows who Michael is--and he isn't about to let him interfere.
A new supernatural series?
Dead people seem to be popping up all over these days, no doubt due to the extreme popularity of the smash hit The Sixth Sense. The Sight is a pilot for a possible television series, and to that end it does a pretty good job of taking the basic premise of Sense and twisting it around into a format that would work well as a weekly series.
As a television movie, The Sight offers enough thrills and action to keep the film going. The story is fairly solid and there aren't any gaping holes of logic. However, the serial-killer yarn is predictable and there are few surprises.
Most of the interesting material revolves around the ghosts and how Michael and the dead learn to help each other, which is a nice touch. The beautiful London architecture and the sets of the once-exquisite Arcadia Hotel add to the moody atmosphere of most of the scenes. Moody is nice when dealing with ghost stories, but the tale is terribly serious and could certainly be lightened up.
McCarthy leads the solid cast and gets great support from Kevin Tighe as Michael's partner Jacob Caine. The few light moments are added courtesy of Jessica Oyelowo as Michael's ghost guide, Isobel, and Alexander Armstrong as the amusing lawyer who shows Michael the legal ropes.
