My Little Eye

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 tells the story of five people who agree to spend six months in a house in the middle of nowhere, in return they will get one million dollars. The catch is that no one will get paid if anyone leaves the house.

I confess that I only watched "My Little Eye" only for Bradley Cooper. I expected it to be a terrible film, but it turned out to be a pleasant surprise. The plot is captivating and thrilling, because the characters and the viewers don't know what is truly happening. Hence, I have no idea how the film will end. Every twist is a surprise, and keeps me guessing what is really happening! When the truth is revealed an hour into the film, I am completely captivated by the plot, and I can hardly catch my breath. I enjoyed watching it a lot!

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!

Setting the plot in the house of an internet broadcast reality show adds some new and modern flavour to what would otherwise have been just a "seen it before"-movie. And allthough the reality show of it is nicely incorporated into the plot, it still basically a fairly standard horror movie set in an old creepy house in the middle of nowhere, and provoking only moderate terror in the viewer at that.

Oh, and some of the plot twists are fairly predictable, at least I saw them coming.

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