Before Your Eyes review: each scene lasts until you blink

The title “Before Your Eyes” derives from a familiar turn of phrase, commonly associated with near death experiences: “my life flashed before my eyes.” When we imagine this flashing we might think of it as a series of memories taking the form of a rapid-fire montage—though some say time slows down during such an event. In the bittersweet and moving Before Your Eyes, developed by GoodbyeWorld Games and directed by Will Hellwarth, Oliver Lewin and Graham Parkes, the life that “flashes” before is unpacked via a string of cradle-to-grave vignettes with a cumulative runtime of around 90 minutes.

The tone oscillates between happy, sad, tranquil, dramatic. The life we inhabit is that of a man named Benjamin Brynn, who grows up in a peaceful beachside home, whose mother is an aspiring artist and whose father is a professor.

The experience is steeped in motion picture storytelling but is certainly not a movie, and has interactive elements but is far from a conventional video game. Crucial to it as a core gimmick, enabled by your headset’s internal cameras: each scene lasts until you blink. After a short non-skippable period, a metronome appears in each every sequence to indicate that if you blink, the story will jump forward by an undisclosed period—perhaps five seconds, perhaps five years. Sometimes this jump is desired, when it’s clear the scenario we’re observing has run its course. Other times we don’t want to leave a particular moment, and, longing to remain there, find ourselves in a self-inflicted A Clockwork Orange stance—eyes bulging, delaying the inevitable.

Before Your Eyes launched in 2021 on smartphones and webcam-enabled computers but found its true home in virtual reality, re-released for the PSVR2 headset. VR imbues the experience with much more intimacy, and it indeed does unfold before our eyes—which are now positioned very close to the camera looking back at us. In VR the act of seeing takes on a new totality: in a completely immersive 360 environment, we cannot look away. Not that the experience utilizes all those degrees: it’s one of those VR productions (like Book of Distance, Paper Birds and Gloomy Eyes, to mention just a few) that concentrates the observer’s attention by blackening out space around the focal area—a basic technique, stemming from theatre, making it clear where we should look.

We begin on a boat as it slowly moves across a surreal mist-covered expanse of water, while a strange character dressed in a mustard cardigan and black skivvy addresses us. He looks half-human and half-wolf, reminding me of how the film Puss in Boots: The Last Wish depicted Death—rendering old mate Grim Reaper as a bipedal whiskery wolf with a long snout.

This introductory sequence cleverly addresses our lack of ability to speak or interact, providing a narrative justification for technological limitations. “I’d ask for your name, but sadly you’ve got no mouth to speak with,” says the wolf-man. “Or hands to shake with, or nose to look down with.” Luckily, our peepers are still tickety-boo.

The cardie-wearing canine then points to a large tower looming in the background, where we’ll meet “the Gatekeeper, to be judged.” He tells us he’ll present our case to said Gatekeeper and recount our life story “from prow to stern.” If the Gatekeeper is impressed, we’ll join “her magnificent city”—which of course is another way of saying we’ll go to heaven, or a heaven equivalent. To become an expert on our life, to know our story backwards and forwards, Wolfy rewinds time, and we experience shared visions of it.

This is a novel structure, more out-of-time than out-of-body—the world absorbable only from Benjamin’s perspective. The first of these flashback-like chapters begins on a beach, during a pleasant day on the sand with mum; when we blink the sun is setting. Soon we’re playing with toys (which we do using our eyes), attending primary school, experimenting with photography and meeting our nextdoor neighbour—a young girl named Chloe. I won’t reveal much more about the story, which is a pleasure to absorb, with well written characters, touching scenarios, and an emotional heft that creeps up on you.

Throughout the experience we never hear Benjamin speak. Hearing the voice of the character you’re embodying is common in virtual reality, dialogue spanning from memorable (the zinger-delivering protagonist in Arizona Sunshine) to mundane (the bland personality of Horizon Call of the Mountain‘s warrior hero) and everywhere in between. But no matter how good the dialogue is, narrated dialogue is always to some extent an immersion breaker, crystallizing thoughts that aren’t our own into a voice that doesn’t belong to us.

Not having a voice also poses plausibility issues, and changes the way drama is presented—for instance emphasising information absorbed by listening to people talk. Again, Before Your Eyes attempts to provide a narrative justification, with passing references to Benjamin being a very quiet individual. It’s not perfect but it helps. A gentle spirit of innovation washes through it, the blinking element adding novelty but not at the expense of deeper meaning. When particular narrative developments take hold, well into the runtime, finessing plot threads established early on, there were occasions when my eyes welled up. And not just because I spent so much time trying to keep the damn things open.