Review: "Five Across The Eyes"

This movie was heavily prefaced by myriad warnings from the festival grand poobahs, who cautioned the audience that it was apparently shot on a VHS camcorder with a mic from Radio Shack, and that the lighting was poor, and that the dialogue was not always polished, and that the performances were not necessarily above the community theater level, assuming the community in question was East Podunk. Then they went on to assure us all that the movie was totally awesome. Well...some of these statements were accurate.

I admire the enthusiasm shown by the actresses in their fearless and unreserved performances, which included having to deal with some literally degrading scenes. I also admire...um...well, the sountrack was...no, that's not it. Uh, there were a couple of good bits, like how the Unstoppable Killing Machine finds the hidden car, and when one of the girls has enough wit to siphon some gas in a critical situation. Also, it was interesting that you could not really tell who the Last Girl was meant to be, although whether this was a deliberate choice on the part of the filmmakers or just sloppy writing isn't quite clear (and of course, the issue ended up being not entirely relevant).

I was not entirely comfortable with having high schoolers as the heroines/victims, which in turn made me question why I'd be all right if they'd been college freshmen. Also, the movie avoids making any of them a traditional doomed target, like the slutty girl, who in slasher film tropes "deserves" what she gets. At worst, one of them might be a Mean Girl. So their brutalization was rather hard to deal with.

On a more technical issue, the story could easily have been tightened up and lost ten minutes or so. The cat-and-mouse game became too much of cat and mouse and cat and mouse and cat.

I commend the filmmakers for an interesting ultra-low budget effort that's sure to draw "Blair Witch" comparisons, but ultimately I just couldn't get behind this one. The final scene is cute, though.