Sundance ‘26: ‘SEE YOU WHEN I SEE YOU’ Is a PTSD-Suicide-Cancer Comedy That’s Still Somehow Funny

Aaron (Cooper Raiff) is having a tough time of it. His little sister, Leah (Kaitlyn Dever), his best friend and, maybe, his soul mate (in the completely platonic sense), has taken her own life. Though she’d wrestled with mental health issues in the past, the reality of her actually following through, of truly leaving home behind, does not compute. His brain simply cannot file it away. He’s stuck, spinning in the grief of her loss and the PTSD of being the one who found her.

What Aaron fails to see is that he’s not the only one shattered by Leah’s death. There’s his polished, type-A sister Emily (Lucy Boynton), his mom Page (Hope Davis), silently absorbing the added weight of a newly discovered lump in her breast, and his dad (David Duchovny), who can’t seem to stop shoehorning his daughter’s suicide into casual conversation with clients. They’re all grieving in their own fragmented ways, but none as publicly, or messily, as Aaron. Withdrawn, drinking too much, and essentially bubble-wrapped from reality, his grief becomes the family’s new crisis. The cycle continues.

See You When I See You, from director Jay Duplass, adapts Adam Cayton-Holland’s memoir Tragedy Plus Time: A Tragi-Comic Memoir with an abundance of humor and sensitivity. For a film about a young man emotionally shut down, it’s strikingly open-hearted. Duplass’ signature tenderness blends seamlessly with sharp comedic instincts, crafting a tragicomedy that genuinely grapples with grief and the occasional necessity of laughing in its face. The uneasy balance between emotional collapse and gallows humor creates something with real depth that never forgets to be funny. As Duplass himself put it, this is a PTSD-suicide-cancer comedy, and somehow, it is. Tragedy and comedy aren’t just coexisting here, their comorbidities elevate one another.

This is in large part due to the strong ensemble cast. Raiff, best known in the festival circuit for best-of-fest hits like Shithouse and Cha Cha Real Smooth, brings a rawness that matches Aaron’s shell-shocked inertia. He captures the emotional complexity of someone stuck in an unresolved loop, retreating into numbness while replaying the worst moment of his life. A poorly plotted attempt to move on without doing any of the necessary therapeutic work sends him right back to that house, running up the stairs, facing the closed bathroom door—his brain flooding with memory. Past and present blur. Trauma cycles in on itself. Nothing is processed, only repeated, and even the good memories get contaminated.

This collision of memory and reality occasionally veers into overwrought territory, but the film earns its stylization through emotional honesty. We’re not just watching Aaron unravel; we’re trapped with him, forced to experience the same mental loop. The repetition threatens to frustrate, but ultimately reveals something deeply truthful about how trauma operates. It’s a cinematic language for what makes Aaron tick. Or not.

Dever, in a limited role, makes a sharp impact, and Davis stands out as the quietly formidable matriarch, carrying both the ache of loss and the uncertainty of her own diagnosis with dignity and rage. It’s great to see Duchovny in a different kind of role than we’re used to. He’s quieter and more introspective here, but still unmistakably charming. Boynton, too, is a compelling foil for Aaron. She may not have been the best friend Leah was, but she’s determined to assert herself as an essential member of their old trio, convinced she can still get a little wild, even if her version of chaos runs on a far more regulated schedule than the sibling duo’s previous shenanigans.

See You When I See You shares some DNA with The Big Sick and other emotionally-literate Sundance tragicomedy staples, and slots neatly alongside the many Duplass-flavored features that have screened here over the years. It’s filled with strong performances, emotionally turbulent, and often formally bold. Occasionally, that boldness threatens to overpower its more delicate elements but when it clicks, it articulates something acutely specific: the kind of PTSD that doesn’t stem from war or assault, but from the slower, quieter devastation of sudden grief, or finding your little sister, your best friend, dead. Just as real. Just as consuming. Far less recognized. See You When I See You targets to change that.

CONCLUSION: Cooper Raiff leads a strong ensemble in Jay Duplass’ ‘See You When I See You’, a tragicomedy about a young man stuck in the loop of grief. Duplass threads heavy subject matter with surprising warmth, capturing the mess and absurdity of surviving the unthinkable.