Look Into The Eyes, Not Around The Eyes..... (Five Across The Eyes (DVD))

Member Name: plipplop

Product:	Five Across The Eyes (DVD)
Date:	11/12/08 (174 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: This is either genius....

Disadvantages: .....or a disaster.

Five female high school students are on their way home from a football match, when they find themselves lost in a remote, rural area of the state, known locally as The Eyes. When they stop off at a local diner to ask directions, they inadvertently knock into another vehicle, smashing one of the front headlights. Worried that they'll get into trouble, and with no obvious witnesses, they speed away from the scene. But a short while later, they come across the vehicle again, notable by the absence of one working headlight and quickly realise that the driver is not happy. It's going to be a long, long night......

Hoo boy! It's difficult to know where to start with this one. With a paltry score of just 3.4 on the Internet Movie Database, along with almost universal condemnation of just about everything about it, it never seemed likely that Five Across The Eyes would be a good movie. There's no doubt about it, it's almost exclusively an absolutely terrible production, despite the fact that in the core of its dark little heart, there's a cracking idea waiting to be developed properly.

In the spirit of Cloverfield, Diary of the Dead and The Blair Witch, Five Across The Eyes is filmed entirely from one, seemingly hand-held camera, which, notably, never leaves the inside of the girls' car. In theory, an innovative approach as this could reap many dividends. You might imagine that this would evoke a genuine feeling of claustrophobia, a feeling of reality driven by the fact that the audience can rarely see exactly what's going on. Sadly, it never really works like that. Primarily, there is no explanation as to why this is being filmed in this way. The camera is not supposed to be somebody's video camera, as per the three aforementioned movies, it's just there because, well, it is, which puts the audience off almost straight away. Clearly, the director decided it would be an interesting approach and that was enough. As such, the technique is largely irrelevant to the narrative. This undersells the whole production enormously, because occasionally, it's close to brilliance. In one particularly violent scene, we can only really glimpse what is happening to one of the girls, making deductions based on a snatched view of a psychopathic hand grabbing one tool from the car after another. The combination of screaming, gruesome noises, bloody tools and absolute hysteria is actually quite disturbing and occasionally suggests that the directors (Greg Swinson and Ryan Thiessen) do actually have a clue about what they're doing. However, pretty much everything else about the film indicates that they don't.

The soundtrack is absolutely dreadful, showcasing a musical range that stretches from a bizarre, cheesy Euro trance sound to heavy, grungy death metal, both of which are completely out of sorts with the on-screen action. It can't even be argued that the music exists because that's what the girls are listening to on the car stereo. Rule number one of the hand-held video movie is that you can't really have a musical soundtrack. It just doesn't work. Rule number two is that if you insist on having one, at least choose an appropriate one.

Early on in the film, the acting is utterly dreadful. None of the five girls (it matters not who the actresses are, you simply wouldn't remember them anyway) has any grasp of the dialogue and seems unable to string together anything close to a normal sentence. They're either unnecessarily emotionally overwrought, totally, like, stupid or a combination of the two. There is nothing that suggests anything real about these girls, most of whom seem to have graduated from the Scary Movie school of over-acting. Interestingly enough, however, as the film descends into grisly chaos, the girl's inability to act becomes less and less of an issue as they are required only to scream, panic, run or bleed. Many reviewers have criticised the chaotic feel exhibited by large sections of the film's running time, complaining that you can barely hear a word that anyone is saying above the screaming or really understand what is happening because it all seems such a blur. Strangely enough, this actually seems to add a layer of authenticity to the proceedings, as the general tone and content indicates a genuine feel to things that more obviously scripted action scenes could not achieve. The film's descent into chaos is actually quite believable. It's easy to accept that five relatively normal girls would largely just scream and go a bit loopy if they found themselves attacked by a nutter, and that's exactly what they do.

This is, however, the only plausible element of the plot, which is, in essence, yet another take on the psycho-stalker action horror. The action revolves entirely around the girls' vehicle, which seems equally capable of rescuing them and dropping them further in it. It is never entirely clear why the psycho is quite so pissed at them (and the psycho is SERIOUSLY pissed) but it wouldn't take a genius to work out that the girls seem incapable of helping themselves and despite their number (five against one) they always seem to be overpowered with the merest slap or kick. In spite of the fact that there is no comedic edge to this film, the plot also contains some hysterically ridiculous moments including the loss of one of the girl's father's ashes, the urn conveniently tucked in the boot of the car, as well as the decision by one of the girls to defecate in her hand and throw it at the psycho's wind shield in order to get said psycho to back off. Whuh?

If you can stick with Five Across The Eyes (and be clear that the hectic camerawork, relentless noise and dreadful soundtrack will make this highly unlikely) you will gradually become immersed in what feels like a genuinely desperate and rather disturbing scenario. That aside, this is more through luck than judgment, with the writers generally opting to try and gross you out rather than genuinely frighten you. One for genre die-hards only, Five Across The Eyes is one of those rare films that demands a remake, albeit in the hands of a skilled director and production team.

Not recommended

Summary: Five teenaged girls drive into their worst nightmare