When I was a child, I watched a film called Patriot Games. It’s a typical thriller from the 1990s starring Sean Bean and Harrison Ford. It ends with an extremely stressful and exciting assault on an isolated farmhouse. The action plays out in complete darkness and, while our hero blindly gropes around the house, the villains wear night-vision goggles attached to their heads. Not only do they have a fatal advantage over their adversary, but the equipment also makes them look terrifying, as if they are some kind of hybridised insects with goggle eyes.
It still makes my skin crawl to imagine that I am being seen by somebody I cannot see. The film ends with an extremely melodramatic flourish and it has haunted me for almost 25 years.
