Review of My Little Eye

Introduction

High profile, but relatively low-grossing horror flick that takes traditional conceits, namely the creepy mansion of haunted house movies and ‘Real-estate’ horrors and a cast of slimly typed adolescents straight from the fourteenth sequel of some ‘teeny-kill pic’ franchise and melds it with the format of reality television. It’s clear from the outset that ‘Big Brother’ is the chief target (and inspiration) informing the narrative: five ‘house-mates’, a smart-arse (Kris Lemche), a slut (Jennifer Sky), a jock (Sean CW Johnson), a priss (Laura Regan) and a geek (Stephen O’Reilly) are lured into a deserted US homestead by the promise of a million dollars in cash, and the threat that they lose it all if one of them leaves. If this simple set-up is as old and well-worn as the rugged landscape that engulfs the house, the use of locked-off digital cameras and the subsequent annihilation of the point-of-view shot (so crucial to the traditional visual scheme of the horror film) ensures an intriguing, novel and claustrophobic experience.

Video

Obviously, being a digital video production, the visual quality here is not stunning. But like ‘The Blair Witch Project’, the hazy aesthetic is crucial to the atmosphere of the piece, and the transfer here is up to scratch on comparable releases.

Audio

The promised 5.1 surround track fails to materialize, and although the film has been torturously sound-designed, little seems to have been lost with its removal.

Features

A much ballyhooed 2-disc set yields commendably ambitious intentions with mixed results. The 30-minute documentary features rather too much cast and crew brown-nosing of director Marc Evans and not enough detail on the production. However there is a good section focusing on the fallout between the filmmakers and Universal after a test screening on September 11th which, unsurprising, was disastrous. It’s also a surprisingly effective indicator of the desperation and unease currently consuming the marketing of British films, as the filmmakers greet the collapse of a spectator at an Edinburgh Film Festival screening with a curious blend of exultation and relief. Evans takes time to rail against the intelligentsia who destroyed his last two films and decided to embrace this one, a bitterness that seems to have been sprung directly from the film itself. The Welsh director also joins producer Jonathan Finn (a man who wields the most boisterous laugh in the history of yak-tracks) for a mild-mannered but absorbing commentary which is both honest and occasionally enlightening. There are also some deleted scenes, mainly focusing on the first few months in the house, plus a couple of good sequences centering on troubled outsider Danny (O’Reilly) excised to make way for the relentless march of the horror plot.

An animated photo-gallery and a set of trailers and TV spots are fairly typical, but the novelty of ‘Interactive Mode’ is anything but. If you choose to indulge in this supposedly ‘revolutionary’ feature you’ll need to locate the access code first (apparently it is somewhere on the disc’s packaging, but if your search proves fruitless it isn’t hard to find on the net). Once accessed you are greeted with a presentation of the film designed to mimic the web-site upon which it is to be viewed, this includes access to full audition tapes, deleted scenes (again), alternative Company ‘commentary’ on certain scenes, multi-angle sequences, and a tinnier, more extreme sound design on the feature. Whilst it sounds promising, this feature is letdown by a glitch-filled interface and relatively minor applications: the deleted scenes can be viewed on fullscreen and with optional commentary on Disc 2; the multi-angle feature is pretty pointless to begin with and even more so without sound and the Company yak-track is frustrating to access and only really yields interest in the final act. As for the glitches, on this reviewer’s player the angle would flip back to fullscreen after every chapter (as well as occasionally turning to the commentary track) and the multi-angle feature requires lightning reflexes to access. It’s a brave stab at attempting to enliven the DVD experience, but only the most generous viewer could call it in any way a success. As a footnote, I advise first-time viewers to watch the film in its regular version first, as the interactive version isn’t precious about giving the game away.

Conclusion

An engrossing film that fuses cruel satire with even nastier horror to interesting effect, whilst never fully satisfying as either of those constituent parts. The unknown ensemble perform their fairly routine narrative functions far more convincingly than any crudely assembled flock of TV-teens possibly could; and Evans, whilst consciously over-designing the film (with atonal horror sounds and treated visuals that deliver a muted palette) manages to stay true to its guerrilla promise, cheating rarely and exploiting the aesthetic and the intrusion of digital cameras, to their full.

However, the satirical edge is never really developed, and whether or not Evans is making some comment about reality shows and the people who go on them is rendered fairly suspect by some revelations in the third act that seek to eradicate the culpability of traditional programme-makers and the effects of such programming on viewers in its true mass-consumptive scale. If the conclusion mutes much of the satiric punch of the film, it also shows the flaws in Evans’ deployment of horror cliches: no slow walk down dark, desolate corridors is not milked gratuitously; the death scenes are garish, elaborate and silly; and despite the alleged revolution in camera technique, much of the film revolves around traditional, angular set-ups, common fodder in even the most pedestrian horror films.

However, Evans and his cast deserve credit for producing a gutsy button-pusher, savage and intelligent enough to pose the viewer serious questions about the spectator’s pivotal role in the voyeurism complex whilst also leaving a sour taste from the schadenfreude impulse, through both the humanity possessed by the characters and the cruelty of a genre, unblinkingly exposed.