Evil Eyes (2004)

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.

The first time I watched this film on Sci-Fi channel, I lost interest halfway through because I thought it was gratuitously graphic and violent. But, upon a second late-night viewing, I realized that the plot is a real mind-bender. I didn't have enough patience the first time I watched it. Also, the second time, I noticed how hot the main actress is. She looks plain, but she is really sexy. The primary actors do a great job, but some of the peripheral roles are filled by amateurs who really make the film look cheap and self-aware. Compared to some other low-budget movies though, Evil Eyes has well-written, believable dialog.

"Evil Eyes" is a rather familiar and predictable film.**SPOILERS**Struggling writer Jeff Stenn, (Adam Baldwin) is assigned a new project about a decades-old serial killer, and asks wife Tree, (Jennifer Gates) and old friend Nina, (Kristin Lorenz) for help when a strange accident stalls his writing. Boss George Trueman, (Udo Kier) advises Jeff to keep going with the script, even as more accidents occur. As the murder case the script is based on begins to consume his life, he repeatedly questions events as they begin happening in both the script and his life. Trying to control the out of control elements in his life, Jeff eventually discovers a secret about the project that changes the entire outcome of the script.The Good News: This really didn't have a lot going for it, but what it did have wasn't that bad. The opening set-up is really well played-out, getting the most suspense at the potential it has. The amount of dread built up through this set-up is pretty high, and it starts out the film with the right feeling. The premise, while done before and is nothing new, is still a fun premise that has the opportunity to get some nice mileage out of it's well-worn track. There's some nice gore in here, including some slit throats, a couple mangled bodies, a drill in the eye and some ax action as well. This wasn't all that bad when it was on.The Bad News: There is several things wrong with this that does need brought up. The film is incredibly predictable, and is a really easy film to guess along the way. Granted, it sets up several different scenarios, but they are all very easy to guess as they're all perfectly logical in the sense the film was headed in, and it's supposed shock doesn't really register as you figured it out along the way. This also extends to it's plot outline, as it's simply a one-note premise that keeps repeating itself. Once you get the trick early on, nothing really happens to change much of it. The premise has also been seen before in several other films, and there's not a whole lot that changes the formula. This is all mostly just a clichéd and predictable film, I really didn't notice much else wrong with it.The Final Verdict: This would've been decent had it not been so boring, but it's got enough good qualities to say that it's good enough to give it a look. It's been seen before, and much better in the other incarnations, so it's not an immediate viewing, but give it a shot if you can find it.Rated R: Graphic Violence and Language

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.