Welcome everyone to October and the first of 31 posts on horrror movies. I came up with a few ideas on what I should do as something special for Halloween and instead of doing my favourite horror/thriller movies or listing a few cult gems that no one has heard of I have decided instead to do combination of both with 1 post each day. Each post will either highlight a cool horror/thriller movie that I enjoy or else I will write about a horror/thriller movie that I have never seen until now. There will also be one exception where I talk a bit about one of my favourite TV series.
I want to thank Serena Whitney from Dread Central for giving me some suggestions of little known good horror movies. So far I’ve worked through 4 off of her list and I’ll be covering them. My intention was to originally write about all of them but I ended quitting Campfire Tales part of the way through just because if felt like a bad version of Twilight Zone or Creep Show so I’m dropping it for some other choice of horror that I will come up with mid month. If there is some little horror gem that you love then feel free to send me an email and perhaps I’ll do that one.
Okay, that is way more than enough preamble on to the first movie.
One of the movies that Serena suggested is a small low budget horror click called My Little Eye. My Little Eye stars Sean Cw Johnson as Matt (all around nice guy and jock), Kris Lemche as Rex (troubled rebel who is in it for the money), Stephen O’Reilly as Danny (quiet geeky loner), Laura Regan as Emma (repressed quiet girl who wants to be liked) and Jennifer Sky as Charlie (party girl who wants fame). The five of them are brought to a house in the middle of the woods where they have to stay for 6 months. If all of them stay they are awarded $1 million dollars. During the 6 months their entire lives will be put on the web like a version of the television show Big Brother.
Everything seems to go fine for the majority of the six months but right near the end everything starts to fall apart as external stresses come into play. It seems that someone has started to stalk the 5 contestants. Is it Emma’s childhood friend who has come back for revenge after she had humilated him. Is Matt really as good and nice as he seems or does he have some secret history. What is Danny working on in the basement? Is the stalker just part of the show perhaps even one of the 5 is trying to keep the others from winning their money or is there something else at play that is much darker than any of them can imagine.
My Little Eye is really two movies combined into one. The first three quarters plays out like a thriller and it is very compelling. There is a real sense of fear in not knowing what is going on and in the rising suspicions amongst the players. I was totally drawn into the character development and the relationships that were being formed. Unfortunately the last quarter turns into a fairly standard stalker story with a conclusion that was pretty obvious. I will definitely not say that it ruined the overall movie for me but it did lessen my enjoyment. I still recommend checking My Little Eye out if you get the chance.
As one final note about My Little Eye it is interesting to find out that it was originally a 4 hour movie that was set to go direct to DVD but after initial testing (and subsequent poor comments) it was cut back to 92 minutes and was released in theatres.
Be sure to check back tomorrow for Day 2 of the 31 Days of Horror.
