Five
Across the Eyes
Accent Underground
R4 DVD
Five
Across the Eyes is a visceral and brutal experience. Shot with deliberately
grainy and raw footage, we see the world through the eyes of five teen girls trying
to make it home after a football match before their curfew. They may not be
likable, but they are very “real” – the acting is very impressive. They take a shortcut and end up lost on a myriad
of back roads. They stop at a store to get directions but they accidently clip
a parked vehicle, so they hit reverse and tail it out of there. As they make it
down the road into a region the local call “the Eyes” they are chased by a SUV
and this is where it gets nasty. Up til now it would be too easy to simply see
Five Across the Eyes as another girls lost in country flick, there are a lot of
them these days and most seem to revel in violence over content. To be honest
considering the look of the film at the start it would be easy to give up, however,
if you stick with it, as I did, you will be suitably surprised.
A
woman in a suit armed with a rifle, forces them out of the car, makes them
strip, degrades them and makes them urinate on their clothes. This is a
disturbing scene which is brutal and powerful. The low budget of the film and
grainy filming only increases the power of the footage; it is as though we are
watching a news report or surveillance footage. The woman is clearly unhinged
and after a range of debasements, she leaves them abused and shaken, but that
is just the beginning.
The
film now moves into a road chase where the girls are hunted down by their unnamed
assailant, who rams the car and pushes them to faster and faster speeds. The
girls speed, swerve and throw things out the window. As the chase accelerates,
it is surprisingly how much a film with a very low budget can get hook you in,
you are on the edge of you seat as their cars speeds through near darkness,
lurching from side to side with the claustrophobic feeling of being inside sharing
the terror of the occupants.
Five
Across the Eyes offers a very unpolished portrayal of violence with urination,
vomit, bruises and bloody faces – mixed with constant yelling, screaming and
crying, it pulls no punches yet avoids revelling. Analysing the film after
watching it, I realized that most of the tension is actually created by the
emotions of the girls than by the actual portrayal of violence, an excellent means
of using suggestion to infer more than you actually show.
In
many ways the film works by focusing on the psychological stress the girls are
experiencing rather than the violence, sure there are violent scenes but these
are generally less than most other films in a similar vein these days and are
always in the context of the film as a whole.
The
ending is suitably intense and while revenge may be sweet, one may debate where
the girls have been reduced by the experience. The final scene which explains
that the woman had slaughtered everyone at the dinner where it all began seems
rather “ad hoc” and leaves me less than impressed. It is as though there was
some sort of need to justify the girl’s response and I felt that it diminished
the climax of the film.
That
being said, Five Across the Eyes is an impressive low budget film from first
time filmmakers. It achieves a sense of menace and psychological horror which
is more powerful that films with ten times the budget. By understanding their
limited budget and using innovative cinematic techniques, emotion and dialogue
over gore and mood and tension over one off shocks they have created a very effective
thriller.