Eyes is told from the perspective of teenager Yukari (Marika Ito), who one day notices a letter scrawled on the door plate of her family's condo unit. She cleans it off, but new markings show up on the following days. While she's trying to puzzle out what these letters might mean, weird things start happening around her. She gets visions of young children hanging around her home, appearing and disappearing at random. She fears that these are malevolent spirits looking to do harm to her younger brother Shota, and that the markings may have something to do with what's going on.
Of course, nothing is as it seems. The film plays out as a mystery, saving big answers that change the context of the events of the story for the very end. Unfortunately, the investigation isn't very compelling, and the answers aren't very good. This is a story that coasts on the recognizable mechanics of the J-horror film, rarely doing anything new, and not even doing the old stuff well. The film is best when it conflates the supernatural with the unique turmoil of this one particular household. But that is all eventually revealed to be a smokescreen as the film starts playing a much less sophisticated game.
The movie has one somewhere memorable image. It involves something showing up in a refrigerator that probably shouldn't be there. It's a nice bit of weirdness in an otherwise really boring film. But even in this example, it's hard to say that the film actually succeeds in being scary. What's missing is a general sense of danger. In all the scenes where Yukari witnesses something out of the ordinary, it doesn't really feel like those things mean to do her harm. These ghosts or whatever show up then leave. Cut to the next scene, and it doesn't even feel like Yukari is worried about having seen these things.
And if the heroine isn't worried, then there's no reason for the audience to be scared, either. In the back half of the film, the story becomes much more about unraveling the central mystery of the story. The film deploys a hackneyed twist that fails to raise the tension. Again, this is a case of a lack of follow through. The film seems to mistake the revelation for resolution. The answers are there, but the consequences aren't felt. The characters end this movie knowing more things, but accomplishing very little in the long run.
There are a couple of nice directorial touches, though they aren't really anything audiences haven't seen before. But the visuals do provide a sense of weirdness that doesn't really present in the writing. The acting is a little hit or miss. Marika Ito is fine as the teenage lead, ably conveying the confusion that her character ought to be feeling. The supporting cast lets her down, though. The older actors, in particular, seem to be playing off completely different energies that at times create tonal incongruities within scenes.
Eyes is another sign in the continuing decline of Japanese horror. The whole genre has been reduced to elements, an overly familiar set of images that don't really add up to a whole lot. In these films, the characters aren't even scared anymore. They aren't in any real danger, as the scenes rarely go beyond the appearance of something otherworldly. There is just so little follow through in this story, so little indication that these characters are affected by what they see and learn, and can do something to change things. In this way, it's barely a story at all.
My Rating:
