Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Ethan Embry, Daniel Sunjata, Mel Rodriguez, Billy Porter, Jay Hindle, Carmel Amit, Veena Sood, Jordan Peele, David Lewis, Samantha Rose, Miles Phoenix Foley, Joel Chico, Frank C. Turner, Paolo Maiolo, Bailey Corneal.

Not all of us have the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of another soul, we may sympathise with their plight, we can perhaps engage with their worries, their suffering, be overjoyed at their feelings of love, their elation, the demands on their time, the peace they wish for; but we cannot ever fully experience what it is to see our shared surroundings and understand the way they view it.

The closest way we can attain such rare insight is through the arts, particularly the passion of the actor, the Lon Chaney’s, the Robert De Niro’s, the ones who make you believe completely that they have got underneath the character’s skin, that they are at one with the fears and genetics, the drives and the hopes of the person to whom they have staked their life and reputation upon. A writer may give you the bare bones, an artist may frame the outward projection, the poet will capture the soul, but an actor must believe that they are one with the person whose individuality they are asked to inhabit.

Such a remarkable insight is perhaps not the stuff of tales designed to chill or make you think beyond the off-beat, a tale of the eccentric rather than the unexpected, but as with all good stories delivered by The Twilight Zone, The Who Of You goes a little further, it asks of the lead role, Ethan Embry, to delve into the skin of several others, and give a tremendous performance as an actor who has become desperate in the face of mounting problems, his relationship with his girlfriend has gone sour, he feels he has become blacklisted by various directors and casting agents, and that the world is out to get him.

There is truth in the way we find the abjectness of misery to be like a disease, easily spread, easily caught, and as Harry Pine finds he can get away with a crime he has committed to alleviate his current cash flow crisis, he spreads that misery and sow confusion with just a stare in the right direction.

The premise may be simple, but the story itself is one that asks the watcher to understand that what lays beneath our skin is just as important as what people see on the surface, and if we can manipulate that sense of reverse ego, if we can make others believe that we are not who we seem on the surface, then we can get away with murder.

The Who Of You captures the essence of what it means to be an actor, and a criminal, in one persuasive episode.

Ian D. Hall