My Little Eye

REVIEW
One of the most genuinely unsettling and suspenseful English-language horror films in recent years, My Little Eye is finally being released on American home video, after generating enormous success in its native England—fortunately, given the film’s limited theatrical release in this country, it’s probably a genre film best suited for the intimacy of home viewing. Director Marc Evans (whose new film Trauma is currently making an impact on the festival circuit) takes a high-concept premise and milks it for all its worth—even bringing some unforeseen twists and surprises into the storyline. The set-up is part-“Real World,” part-“Survivor,” as five young people are sent to live for six months in an isolated old house in the woods (though the film is British, it was shot in Canada to appear American); all of their activities are simulcast live over the internet through various tiny cameras placed throughout the house. As they reach their final week of residence in the dead of winter, the tedium is interrupted by strange occurrences that force the quintet to consider the possibility that they are not alone, and that malevolent forces might be making their final week a particularly torturous one. But is it simply the sponsoring website throwing them psychological curveballs to heighten the online melodrama, or is it something much more dangerous? Evans masterfully exploits the sense of claustrophobic isolation inherent in the film’s settings, as well as the unnerving tone of voyeurism that results from My Little Eye’s central conceit of placing five characters in a 24-7 reality-media fishbowl of observation (many sequences are depicted via the fixed webcast cameras). But Eye transcends the simple gimmick of its premise, as Evans’ film contains some genuinely shocking and goosebump-inducing narrative twists, making My Little Eye one of the most admirably creepy British genre endeavors in years.