Five Across the Eyes

Im really interested in low or no budget movies that provides a genuine feeling and atmosphere. The silent house is an excellent example, because despite its flaws, it offers an original atmosphere at a minuscule budget. Another film (a short film you can watch for free on youtube)that does offer a lot of emotion in a horrifying, but comically painful way is Phantom miscarriage. Five across the eyes don't really give me anything! The story is simple, a couple of young girls, get lost, bumps into a strangers car by accident and escapes. Pretty soon they are chased by a maniac woman who tries to kill them. A typical slasher story.

Its nice that the creators of this film have made an attempts to create something unique, but wiggly camera angles, bad acting, and a plot not worked through enough gives me nothing. I saw a bunch of amateur movies made by media students, while I was studying drama, and these movies ware far better. Every scene should be worked through in a good movie. The purpose for the scene, the camera angles for the scene, and the actors should have enough time to get into character no matter how bad they are. What the movie really lacks is suspense, effects that are worked through, and a feeling of realism. They had the intent to create something, but failed. Oddly enough they worked hard enough to get the movie released!

I can't believe anyone liked this movie. I've seen a lot of low-budget indie films, but this one absolutely sucked. Low budget doesn't mean the movie has to be demented. Horror doesn't mean the movie has to be demented. There was nothing scary about this movie at all. It was just a gore-fest, and a particularly disturbing one at that. The acting was average, considering they were all unheard of actors, but the story was pathetic, the dialog was pathetic. The movie tries to come off as "artistic", or something. This is not one of those really great indie films that cost only thousands of dollars to make, but are incredibly well done. This was nothing more than an excuse for some extremely sick people to put their perverse obsessions on film. Other reviews here also said that the soundtrack sucked...that's because most of it was written by the same person, and some of the songs were written by one of the writers of the movie. There were no redeeming qualities to this movie at all. A complete waste of my time and money.

This really is the most dreadful film I have ever seen. I simply have no idea how anyone has the audacity to put this on release.

The production standards are atrocious. There is no pretence here at cinematography. The camera work, scripting, acting and sound are unbelievably crass. I think there is a plot, but it could have been done in 10 minutes sparing us the time to watch it. The hysterical neurotic girls at the centre of this piece have no credibility whatsoever.

I would urge anyone to avoid spending any time or money on this Title. It is truly atrocious.

JDD - 14 December 2008

As horror fans we all know that blind rentals are a crap-shoot. Sometimes we find a real gem, but many times we find that the film we've just spent our hard earned money on is nothing more than a putrid steamer made worse by the completely undeserved rave reviews and film fest awards listed on the box. Such is the case with Five Across the Eyes ( a title I'm sure is a double entendre referring to both the films budget and the compulsion anyone watching it might have to using all five fingers to stab their eyes out ).

The story, or, at least what the *ahem* writers think passes for one, centers on a group of teen girls who unwisely decide to go on a backwoods joyride late at night after leaving a football game and run afoul of a crazy woman who plays cat and mouse with them as punishment for what she thinks the girls found in her car after a fender-bender in a gas station parking lot.

In fairness, it's an interesting idea. Some of the best horrors have very simple story lines. It's in the execution of Five Across the Eyes that this idea falls flat. The film tries to be a cross between The Blair Witch Project with its shaky camera work and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in its bare-bones approach to the material but succeeds at being neither. What we get instead are redundant scenes of chase, torture, release; chase torture, release, in that order for 94 minutes with long interludes of bitching, moaning, and incoherent rambling acting as plenty of padding in-between chase sequences.

The look of the film is incredibly grainy and dark, which, in a better made film might have enhanced the tension and the realism. Here it's merely annoying. The characters are undeveloped and the viewer is hard-pressed to find anything to sympathize with them. One character stops to get a first-aid kit and tend to some scrapes on her face while gunshots heard in the background indicate her friends may be getting killed. Another girl mutters hilariously dumb lines like "Don't go out there, she'll get you, if she gets you she'll kill you and if she kill's you you're dead".

It was an accolade from Fangoria magazine and Dreadcentral.com listed on the box that compelled me to check this one out. Talk about a fake orgasm! Perhaps my expectations would have been met had this been in the comedy section. I'm all for low-budget Indie horror but this one takes the crap-cake. Give Five Across the Eyes (or FATE; get it?) a pass.

RazorFriendly gives FATE 1 slash out of five /

The teenagers Isabella (Sandra Paduch), Jamie (Danielle Lilley), Melanie (Mia Yi), Caroline (Angela Brunda) and Stephanie (Jennifer Barnett) are lost in a shortcut they took in their way back home. The inexperienced Bell is driving her mother's van and is worried about the late hour. The quintet decides to stop in an isolated store to ask for directions, and Bell accidentally bumps one headlight of a parked SUV. The girls decide to leave the place and drive in the dark and lonely road trying to reach the main road. They decide to make a u-turn and they are chased by the driver (Veronica Garcia) of the SUV along a night of terror.

After the idea of "The Blair Witch Project", many filmmakers have found a way of making low-budget movies in a kind of American version of the Dogma 95, some of them engaging like the Spanish "REC" but most of them complete failures.

"Five across the Eyes" is completely amateurish film and debut of the directors, writers, cast and crew and uses the same style, with hand held camera, poor lighting and few locations. The hysteric girls are annoying, screaming and crying along the 95 minutes running time. Further, they have unreasonable silly behavior along the most loneliness road of the world, giving the chance of a maniac killer attacks them several times. This film is painful to watch, with the excessive sadism and violence, and should be shorter and shorter. The only consolation is that I have seen films worse than this one, reason for my rating. My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): "Através dos Olhos" ("Through the Eyes")