|
For what
it's worth, Reininghaus is a very competent director with visual
flourishes and grim depictions of torture that were both very unsettling
and impossible to sit through. I found myself having to pause the film
through most of the sequences as the cast just charges head first in to
the horror that ensues with screaming and a vicious strangulation and
raping. As for the cast, they're very good with folks like Danielle
Barker and Robert Nolan pulling in strong performances and convincing
reactions to what should be a utterly horrifying little situation.
Speaking as a person afflicted with mental illness for most of my
life, I didn't quite appreciate the turn the film takes mid-way.
What begins as a thriller that turns in to a revenge thriller
suddenly pulls the carpet out from under us and completely dives
head first in to utter camp and exploitation revealing the original
intent which is to put on display a man in dire need of help reliant
on medications. "Eyes Beyond" would be a much better film if it
stuck to its original goal, which is clearly to be deemed as an
exploitation horror thriller and nothing more. But for what it
purports to do, it pretty much turns the plight of the mentally ill
in to horror movie cannon fodder that borders on camp and pure
exploitation and then takes a bit of a sanctimonious turn by
advising us that mental illness puts people around us at risk as
much as suicide does in the very end credits. It's an unfortunate
and uncomfortable little subtitle that does not belong to a movie of
this ilk. You don't turn mental illness in to horror movie hokum and
then put a PSA in the tail end trying to teach us a lesson. That's
akin to Hitchcock showing his audience "Psycho" and then in the very
end when we learn the big twist we see a warning about the dangers
of bipolar disorder and where to contact your local therapist. It
just doesn't belong.
|
You either take mental illness
seriously, or just flat out exploit it for entertainment
purposes. You just can't have it both ways. "Eyes Beyond"
seems to want to work as both a public advisory and a horror
film and doesn't quite succeed in either counts. In either
case, the primary character of the story Gabriel is such a
loose cannon it's impossible to understand where he's coming
from in the final scenes. Is he on the verge of complete
psychopathic breakdown, or is he just mentally ill and
suffering from horrible mental diseases? |
|
 |
And
it's never explained what type of disease he has or what affliction
he's suffering from so the ultimate scenarios staged are just
exaggerated and ridiculous. As someone who has full on experience in
such a sickness, that's not how it goes. "Eyes Beyond" makes such a
broad trite generalization of mental illness and then back strokes
by insisting "Oh we know how horrible mental disease can be, so be
careful, y'hear?" Uh--thanks for the warning. As stated above, you
either dive head first in to shameless exploitation or proceed with
a stern depiction of the horrors of mental illness. On the outset I
was very optimistic about the story which then took a turn for the
worse and then introduced a third plot twist that threw me for a
loop (I literally muttered to myself: "Ooh! Nice!"). But then
director Reininghaus completely undermines his potential with an
final scene that's both tacked on, awkward, stereotypical, and
distasteful as someone with experience in such a mental disability.
While
the direction is sharp and the performances disturbing, "Eyes Beyond" is
a pretty distasteful and contradictory bit of sanctimonious mumbo jumbo
that drops us in to the middle of a chaotic and violent situation and
backs off with a melodramatic surprise twist that's just sloppy and a
tad offensive. You either go for the gut or don't go for it at all.
|
