Eye of the Beast should have been titled The Movie Where Absolutely Nothing Interesting Happens. This dull, generic, and completely pointless creature feature is poorly paced beyond all comprehension. It’s loaded with an ending beyond ridiculous, and barely any creature to speak of.
As soon as a monster movie opens and two teenagers are making out in the middle of nowhere wondering, “What was that noise?,” you’re instantly in trouble. You know they’re dead, you know you won’t see the full monster, and you know it’s about to spawn a mystery about what happened. All of this falls into place as expected, with full rip-offs of Jaws strewn everywhere.
The cookie cutter script makes everything from the budding romance to racial tensions between natives and the local fishing economy as exciting as watching a rock do, well, whatever a rock does when it lays around. James Van Der Beek is the only recognizable name on the cast list, and delivers his lines for a paycheck in his fight with the government who won’t believe him when he makes claims of the monster.
As for the creature, a giant squid with the munchies for humans dumb enough to cross its path, whenever it’s on screen, it’s a single tentacle. All of the kills are performed by practical effects, which is admittedly a nice change of pace from a film era riddled with computer generated disasters. However, the rubber tentacle is mostly shrouded in darkness and tough to make out, while the kills are few and far between.
The squid does make a full appearance in the final seconds. After taking down an entire boat by staying underwater, the thing inexplicably pops up in full view, floats there, and waits for the main characters to complete their plan to destroy it. The sense of scale is nice, though this is a section where the CG stuff takes over with ill effects.
Without an ounce of originality behind it, Eye of the Beast is an unquestionable skip for even die-hard sci-fi fanatics. If giant squids are your thing, the movie adaptation of Peter Benchley’s The Beast is the best you’ll do. If you have a hankering to see a small community terrorized by the unknown, the hundreds of Jaws rip-offs can fit your bill.
Article comments
1 - Kevin Kohout
This movie may be cookie cutter. But many people like the 'anticipation'.
2 - Kevin Kohout
At the end of a hard work week, the anticipation of a horror flick is what helps me through the next week!