Evil Eyes (2004)

You won't be disappointed!

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

I want to keep my movie collection down to a manageable & rational number for reasons I won't go into here. Evil Eyes became a keeper because of its treatment of females. The movie was way too violent first time through, so I wrote it off & forgot about it, or so I thought at the time. But the images of the girls kept coming back on me. They were all attractive in various ways and whoever shot the scenes including them adores the opposite sex as much as I do. And the actresses treatments of their own respective characters bridged the gap between drama and reality. In other words, they were at the same time, themselves and the roles they were playing. You see this kind of melding in live comedy skits, as on Saturday Night Live, but I can't think of another movie with actresses so ready to break out.

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.