Julia's Eyes (2010)

Thanks for the memories!

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Absolutely the worst movie.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Belén Rueda is beautiful in this intriguing and fascinating movie, and the scenery is haunting. It's mysteriously atmospheric and I wonder if there will be a Hollywood remake on the cards. There should be numerous stars lining up for this, perhaps Paltrow in the lead, and also someone from the cast of Friends to round it off.

Julia's Eyes has some pleasures but is content to remain a confused and unfulfilling thriller; only its slowly descending blindness gimmick its one true saving grace. The premise has tinges of a giallo feel: the woman suffering from some disability and/or her lack of understanding/seeing being a central fulcrum of the mystery, and the killer cloaked in shadow and darkness like an other-worldly creature until its all too benign reveal.The plot lacks the ludicrous twists and panache of the best of the giallos and it lacks the strains of credibility to ground the better of the more straight-forward domestic thrillers. It languishes somewhere in between, neither a surreal horror dream nor a taut exercise in genre.

I'm always skeptical of horror films which use consistent jumpscares to frighten the audience instead of more honest, creative methods. Happily, Julia's eyes contains a grand total of one jumpscare, meaning the rest of the film had to find another way of being scary, and I'm happy to report that it didn't disappoint. This has to be one of the only films that has genuinely creeped me out, and it's down to the excellent writing, directing and production. Unfortunately, I can't say that about many other horror films these days.I only came across this film by chance as it was on television one night. I decided to give it a go, which turned out to be a pretty good decision. This is now one of my favourites in the horror genre - brilliantly written and gripping all the way through.

When her blind twin sister Sara dies, Julia Levin (Belén Rueda) is instantaneously convinced that suicide is out of the question, despite what her husband Isaac (Lluís Homar) and police claim. Suffering from the same genetic illness, Julia's sight is also failing, a process quickened by stress. When the truth behind Sara's death slowly lapses into an obsession, strange things start occurring with a shadow of a man constantly lurking in the background. While visiting a home for the blind, the local janitor reveals much into the nature of this presence: 'an invisible man', a person with such a weak life aura, that he melts with the shadows, unnoticed by normal people, only noticed by people with heightened senses, such as the blind...The intriguing premise, offering some philosophical origins of conception, offers a strong backbone for the story: a faceless man, unnoticed by the world at large, not due to special skills, but thanks to insignificance. However for the most part this aspect of the story gets a purely functional treatment, utilised for its possibility of creating tension and a sense of thrill. Our perpetrator is constantly mired in shadows, unseen, lurking somewhere in the background. Meanwhile as Julia's sight falters, so does the camera - a concept used with dreaded effectiveness throughout the movie. Corresponding to Julia's growing blindness camera angles start becoming less revealing, creating a sense of lack of control, while peoples faces are entirely cut from the picture, with only voices offered to differentiate between characters.This creates a level of chilly atmosphere into the somewhat cumbersome and overly convoluted story, which attempts to introduce too many threads and dangerously languishes into melodramatic territory, but without the same sense of control offered by Pedro Almodovar. Thus soon the movie becomes more about how it was filmed, less about the somewhat poorly handled story which challenges the attention span of viewers with non-focused narrative. These plot contrivances make "Julia's Eyes" level down to slightly above average horror fare, albeit when the base concept works it does so with some thrilling panache. A shame given these moments of pure perfection are sabotaged by the overall chaotic distractions bundled into the plot.