My Little Eye has Emma (Laura Regan), Charlie (Jennifer Sky), Matt (Sean Cw Johnson), Danny (Stephen O'Reilly) & Rex (Kris Lemche) answer an advert on the internet that reads 'Wanted, 5 contestants for reality webcast & 6 months in a house for $1 million if anyone leaves, everyone loses!' & they become the chosen five. They are stuck in a large house in the middle of a snow covered forest, the house is rigged with cameras which capture their every move & every conversation for the subscribers of the website to see & listen to. At first things go alright but things soon take a sinister turn when Danny receives a letter which states his Granfather has died, Rex receives a gun, Emma finds a bloodstained hammer in bed next to her when she wakes up one morning & a skier named Travis Patterson (Bradley Cooper) mysteriously turns up out of nowhere. Is it all a game? As tensions grow the friends begin to fear for their very lives...
This English, American, French & Canadian co-production was directed by Marc Evans & I thought it was a pretty good horror/thriller. The script by co-producer David Hilton takes it's inspiration & theme from modern pop culture, from reality TV shows such as the extremely popular Big Brother shown here in the UK to the fascination with the internet & the power it has. The fact that we are always being watched, the fact we live in a proverbial goldfish bowl where no aspect of our lives are truly secret & the desire for more extreme forms of entertainment. I liked the ideas in My Little Eye & I thought it was very effective at drawing the viewer in, it's quite gripping, engaging & overall fairly interesting to watch how things unfold. My Little Eye is also one of those films that you could almost put yourself in the position of any of the character's & try to think about how you personally would react in their situation. As a whole the film is quite open ended & not much exposition is given & not much is revealed about the what is happening. It takes itself 100% seriously, it moves along at a pretty good pace, the character's are convincing enough & most of what happens is at least feasible I suppose.
Director Evans shoots himself in the foot with the film-making techniques he uses, from jerky hand-held camcorder shots just like The Blair Witch Project (1999) to shots & entire sequences seen in infra red night vision which ends up giving the film a cheap & annoying feel to it. On the other hand some of these techniques work well in the sense it gives My Little Eye a gritty, realistic almost documentary feel to it, unfortunately the negative aspect outweighs the positive in my opinion on this issue. There isn't much gore, a quick decapitation & that's it although there is a brutal scene of someone being suffocated with a plastic bag which would be a horrible way to die. The film has a nice atmosphere, good amounts of tension & a nice creepy feel to it.
My Little Eye supposedly had a budget of about $3,000,000 & I must admit that sounds a lot of money for what eventually ended up on screen although curiously the 'Trivia' section on the IMDb states that My Little Eye was originally four hours long which is more than double it's length now so maybe that's where a lot of the extra money went. I don't think I could sit through a four hour version of this, what on Earth did the extra footage consist of? Anyway, I guess we'll never know so it doesn't matter. The acting was decent & naturalistic which is what the film was obviously needed.
My Little Eye isn't a complete success that's for sure but there was enough here for me to like it. Having said that I think My Little Eye is one of those films that you will either love or hate & I doubt too many people will sit on the fence as it were. I liked it but it's far from perfect, still definitely worth a watch if you like your horror.
This English, American, French & Canadian co-production was directed by Marc Evans & I thought it was a pretty good horror/thriller. The script by co-producer David Hilton takes it's inspiration & theme from modern pop culture, from reality TV shows such as the extremely popular Big Brother shown here in the UK to the fascination with the internet & the power it has. The fact that we are always being watched, the fact we live in a proverbial goldfish bowl where no aspect of our lives are truly secret & the desire for more extreme forms of entertainment. I liked the ideas in My Little Eye & I thought it was very effective at drawing the viewer in, it's quite gripping, engaging & overall fairly interesting to watch how things unfold. My Little Eye is also one of those films that you could almost put yourself in the position of any of the character's & try to think about how you personally would react in their situation. As a whole the film is quite open ended & not much exposition is given & not much is revealed about the what is happening. It takes itself 100% seriously, it moves along at a pretty good pace, the character's are convincing enough & most of what happens is at least feasible I suppose.
Director Evans shoots himself in the foot with the film-making techniques he uses, from jerky hand-held camcorder shots just like The Blair Witch Project (1999) to shots & entire sequences seen in infra red night vision which ends up giving the film a cheap & annoying feel to it. On the other hand some of these techniques work well in the sense it gives My Little Eye a gritty, realistic almost documentary feel to it, unfortunately the negative aspect outweighs the positive in my opinion on this issue. There isn't much gore, a quick decapitation & that's it although there is a brutal scene of someone being suffocated with a plastic bag which would be a horrible way to die. The film has a nice atmosphere, good amounts of tension & a nice creepy feel to it.
My Little Eye supposedly had a budget of about $3,000,000 & I must admit that sounds a lot of money for what eventually ended up on screen although curiously the 'Trivia' section on the IMDb states that My Little Eye was originally four hours long which is more than double it's length now so maybe that's where a lot of the extra money went. I don't think I could sit through a four hour version of this, what on Earth did the extra footage consist of? Anyway, I guess we'll never know so it doesn't matter. The acting was decent & naturalistic which is what the film was obviously needed.
My Little Eye isn't a complete success that's for sure but there was enough here for me to like it. Having said that I think My Little Eye is one of those films that you will either love or hate & I doubt too many people will sit on the fence as it were. I liked it but it's far from perfect, still definitely worth a watch if you like your horror.