Stars: Sunita Mani, Sarita Choudhury
Budget: $5million
Directed By: Elan & Rajeev Dassani
This movie is one of four horror films made or selected by Blumhouse for Amazon Prime over the October period. I'll be reviewing each one with my thoughts on each film, next up:
Evil Eye an almost exclusively Indian cast tells a supernatural tale that even though is a tried and tested formula weaves in the lifestyles and beliefs of the characters to give it a fresher feel.
This was the one and only Blumhouse film that had an easily obtainable budget attached, guessing they had all around the same amounts spent on them. Very little to no effects some practical blood effects and warping for old memory flashbacks etc.
Acting wise this film had some of the best acting chops out of the four films very strong performances from ALL of the cast especially Sunita as the troubled mother. This film also insights into how Indian families work as well as their (more modern) out looks on life, money and tradition.
It's a thing to marry into same race, rich families if your female, I have and still do have some good Indian friends. It was nice to see as an outsider something I've talked to them about, though i believe these were/are Bengali Indians who are mostly Hindu, pretty apt for the theme of the film. Which as I've said is a tried and tested horror film premise, a killer that doesn't stop even in death.
So on with the actual film. We join Pavilli who is a close to 30 Indian woman with her mother (Usha) constantly going on about finding a husband. Seeing some her friends happy with spouses/boyfriends she reluctantly agrees to go on a date her mother sets up in a coffee shop.
Her date ends up late so she ends up talking to a good looking Indian guy instead, he's rich too and seems perfect. The two hit it off and things move fast. Usha after seeing him however starts to get bad feelings about him, linked to something that happened to her in the past. This gets even worse after she talks to him and something he say triggers more memories.
She advises Pavilli to leave him but due her seemingly failing health and mental stability everyone begins writing off her feelings as just being all in her head. I really cannot say anymore without spoiling a big twist, that is telegraphed quite openly, though does keep you guessing for a good portion of the film though
Despite being filmed late 2019 the way this film is filmed seems very apt for todays Covid19 situation, a lot of it is singularly filmed over the phone conversations, with only a few people at a time coming into direct contact, I liked that.
Despite being one of the lowest ranked of the 4 Blumhouse films, this one was one of the ones I enjoyed the most of all. Despite it's tried and tested formula the newish take on it. THN awards Evil Eye (2020) a strong 4 out of 5 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment