Circuito cerrado

My Little Eye takes the premise of 'Big Brother' and warps it. Five 'contestants' are invited to stay in a house for six months but if any of them leave, they all lose the $1million on offer.

Where this film really works is in its use of sound and sudden shocks - early on a raven in the dark provides some truly 'jump out of your skin' moments, the rear channels working over time to engulf the viewer in a feeling of dread.

The film gets darker and darker in its tone as we begin to realise that what the contestants signed up for what very different to what they thought they had. Feelings of dread and hopelessness pervade the screen as we, along with the contestants begin to learn the truth behind the game and its very dark secrets.

Many words have been used to describe this classic fright-fest and in the case it seems wholly appropriate to use both 'Harrowing' and 'Disturbing' in this context. I went in expecting a frightening and upsetting horror yarn and that's precisely what I got.

Full marks to all involved - this is no easy ride and for all you horror fans out there bored of the glossy popcorn fodder of Scream and its ilk, this will be a welcome breath of fresh air.

Watch it - just not alone!

Why all the bad comments? I don't understand it. True, most low budget thrillers are terrible. Serial killer knock offs without big name movie stars usually depend on gore effects, not characters, to keep us interested in what's going to happen next. This movie, though, is a tightly wound little scare piece that takes its time developing the characters and building suspense. The actors are terrific, the camera work unique and unsettling, and the direction always seems on target. The movie's main gimmick reads like it's going to be glib and possibly stupid, but the actors, and the director's ability to maintain a mood of foreboding, quickly dismisses any possible derision. I bought it and recommend it to anyone looking for a good, creepy thriller.

One house. Five people. Six months. One million dollars. A reality show webcast offers five young people the opportunity to make money by staying in a house for six months with the only catch being that if any of them leave then none of them win anything. After some time in the house with loads of boredom, one of them gets a letter saying his grandfather has died. He wants to leave but nobody wants to make it that easy for him to blow all their money. When bricks get delivered instead of supplies and a stranger who happens by the house says he has never seen or even heard of their reality show, alarm bells start to ring.

When this came out I just assumed it was a slasher movie that decided to try and ride the wave of reality show popularity all the way to the box office. Even if that was the case, it didn't really work and this film didn't do a great deal of business in the UK – although respectable returns considering it was low budget anyway. The film takes a very "Blair Witch" approach to things by being pretty unnerving rather than out and out scary or gory. The director cleverly uses the angles and grainy appearance of Big Brother (night vision included) to invoke the feeling of the series but also to raise the tension. It is a bit of a gimmick but it does work because, despite it showing its budget, the cuts and the angels do raise tension.

The problem is that the plot is never as good as it should have been. It goes where you expect it to do and there isn't much more to it than that. The film could easily have been making a point about the exploitative nature of such reality shows, the type of people that go on them and the sort of things that we turn in to watch (lets be honest – the fights and the sex). It does these if you think about it but the delivery lacks the intelligence that the concept potentially had. It is a shame because this would have been better if it had had this commentary because it would have covered up for the lack of substance, plot and development of the film. The cast are fairly average which suits the reality TV feel of the film.

Overall then this is a film all about atmosphere and tension – well handled by director Evans. The concept offers commentary but the film delivers none or very little; what remains is a simple thriller in the low budget mould of Blair Witch. As such it works for the majority of the running time on atmosphere alone but the descent in the final 20 minutes didn't really work for me. An interesting film for this aspect but sadly lacking in things like commentary, substance, development and total worth.

This film was billed as a completely new for the genre. Its not.

Initially it starts out as a fairly edgy psycological suspense movie - focusing on the characters current paranoia and past skeletons. Had it continued in this vein things may have shaped up into something genuinely scary.

However, about a third of the way through, the plot is pretty much revealed (or can be guessed at) and the movie descends into a poorly paced slasher formula - except this time in a Reality TV House (which is incidently the plot of the new Halloween movie - previewed before this one starts!!).

The web-cam perspective adds something - but at the same time borrows heavily from Blair Witch and the end scenes from Silence of the Lambs - both of which were done better.

4/10 missed opportunity.

My Little Eye is directed by Marc Evans, it's about five adults who agree to spend six months together in an isolated mansion in the hope of winning the $1million prize. The twist being that it's all being filmed for the internet and if just one of the house mates leaves? Then the task has failed. Pretty soon the house mates' resolve is tested as the mysterious "company" starts doing all they can to make the group implode…….

Riding in on the wave of Big Brother style reality shows and low budget documentary type films such as Blair Witch, My Little Eye is an unsettling and claustrophobic horror piece. The set up is perfect, an old dark house setting filled with darkened rooms and the whirring of cameras. Five unlikable characters (a reality TV staple it seems). And then there's us, the viewers. Observing as these five beings (three boys-two girls) are steadily tortured psychologically. We be voyeurs to edgy emotion as the group start to crack under duress, things from their pasts are used against them. And of course nothing is quite what it seems. Given the truly creepy first hour, the piece is not as scary as a whole as it could have been. But Evans utilises the cleverly conceived premise for a series of shocks and unease inducing sequences. The sound effects are jolting and the night time green tint moments are hugely effective. The cast are standard fare, but that's most likely the point of it all, in that we need wannabe stars instead of stars, and the finale has a nice bent to it that lifts it away from the film's it has took influence from. Good and creepy horror piece that has a terrific DVD release that further implicates us in the story. 7/10