El ojo de Lucifer

EVIL EYES takes a couple of good actors and a decent idea for a plot, then sinks it under an avalanche of bad writing and directing.

Adam Baldwin (not related to Alec and company) plays Jeff, happily married to Tree (I didn't make that up, it's the character's name) and trying to succeed in L. A. as a screenwriter. He gets an offer from George, a producer looking for someone to develop a script about a multiple murder 35 years ago.

It seems that a filmmaker named Gramm went quite mad and slaughtered his family. Jeff visits the house where the murders took place, and soon sets to work. As time passes he realizes that what he writes in the script also happens in real life, and to people he knows.

This is perilously close to Stephen King's short story "Word Processor of the Gods" but this film is obscure enough that King didn't sue.

The film is character driven in that our involvement in the story is proportionate to our involvement in the characters. And that's the sticking point.

The characters are not involving. Jeff and George are played by two competent actors who bring presence to their roles. The other actors range from competent to awful. A "tense" scene in which Tree's parents try to persuade her that Jeff must abandon the screen writing project goes nowhere because all three performers are terrible. It's hard to get the old adrenaline pumping when people are reading crucial dialog as if they were reciting the alphabet.

The direction is unimpressive, and the staging of the climax is done so ineptly that any impact is lost. The "surprises" revealed in the narrative just lie there.

I don't think these are bad actors: they're actors delivering bad performances. The director's mind may have been on delivering shocks and gore and he just didn't worry about the actors.

I've done a little directing and quite a bit of acting (all on stage) and watching this I wish I could have had time to work with the actors to help them find the humanity in their characters and connect with them; can you tell I'm a product of the 1960's and a believer in Stanislavski's theory of Method Acting, the search for "theatrical truth" in which actors look for the motivation and feelings of the characters and try to connect this with experiences from their own lives to help them relate to the characters they are playing?

Visually, it's a mixed bag. Some scenes are atmospheric, using light and shadow effectively. Others aren't.

Still, kudos to The Asylum to making a film that's not a direct rip-off a bigger piece of work.

Are all screenwriters narcissistic? Seems like a lot of them think that their life is so interesting that it deserves to be told to the whole world as a feature film. In a best case scenario, you get Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation... which I liked because it took that narcissism and made fun of it. In a worst case scenario you get Evil Eyes.

For the whole movie, the main character goes around doing screenwriter things: talking to his agent, trying to get some job at Dreamworks, complaining about how no one understands his art... etc. Just like Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation, but without any of the style. Boring, boring, boring.

About twenty minutes in, our protagonist gets a job offer. It comes from a strange foreign gentleman (a la Angel Heart) and soon he's off writing a MOW about a guy who killed his wife. Pretty soon, he becomes convinced that the words that he writes can actually kill. If anyone out there has ever read the Stephen King short story called Word Processor of the Gods, you'll recognize the plot... that's clearly what the writer stole... Er... was inspired by.

A screenwriter (Adam Baldwin) is plagued by nightmares as he writes a script about a family that was slaughtered years before. Soon, the grisly murders he writes about start to actually happen.

I was attracted to this film by Udo Kier, a great actor, here being the creepy German guy he does so well. Unfortunately, Kier's presence is just about the only good thing I can say about the movie (and even then, his role is rather limited -- though more than a cameo).

Surprisingly, or maybe not, the movie is rather boring. Baldwin does not hold my attention well, I have no concern for his character. The death scenes, which offer plenty of potential for creativity, just never impress. A shot of a drill is okay, and a quick shot of a man who looks burned is alright... but it is all too tame.

The theme of fiction and reality crossing over is done alright, but if I wanted to see something like that done well, I would watch "In the Mouth of Madness". There is also a satanic undertone, but perhaps far too subtle to even be considered a subplot...

Continuing on my curiosity rampage to see if The Asylum were capable of a tolerable enough movie I saw Evil Eyes. It is a bad movie, but not enough to be among The Asylum's worst. The opening scene does have some atmosphere and a sense of dread, Udo Kier is a creepy presence and Adam Baldwin has some likability. That's all I can give for redeeming qualities though. It is very haphazard technically, with camera work and editing that will make you dizzy, lighting that feels dark just for the sake of it rather than enhancing the atmosphere and effects that look as if the technicians were concerned more about quantity rather than quality. Apart from Baldwin and Kier(the latter actually deserved more screen time because if I had to single out the best thing of Evil Eyes he would be it), the acting is amateurish and can't do anything to lift their cardboard characters and stilted dialogue. The story is also a major problem, the opening sequence is the only scene that works in terms of atmosphere and suspense, everything else is padded out predictability to the point of sheer boredom. The gore and killings have nothing that stands out as original, and there is the feel that Evil Eyes wasn't even trying to make sense. All in all, has a couple of redeeming values, other than that Evil Eyes is a mess. 3/10 Bethany Cox

The successful screenplay writer Jeff Stenn (Adam Baldwin) is in disgrace with the big studios and needs money to pay his mortgage. He is happily married to his wife Tree (Jennifer Gates) and they are trying to have a baby, but he is afraid that his financial situation affects his marriage. Out of the blue, the weird producer George (Udo Kier) offers the true story of a real homicide that happened thirty-five years ago to Jeff to write the screenplay. He accepts the offer and learns that the killer killed his pregnant wife and in-laws and committed suicide after. While writing the screenplay, Jeff sees many friends and acquaintances dying and questions whether his writing is causing the deaths.

"Evil Eyes" is an ironic horror film since it is based on the storyline of a screenplay writer, but the movie itself has a messy screenplay. The premise and the beginning are promising, but the characters development is poor and the plot absolutely confused. In the end, it is a boring horror movie that makes the viewer sleep. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Olhos Malditos" ("Evil Eyes")