Julia's Eyes (2010) Thriller

Julia's Eyes (2010) - Los ojos de Julia, Original title, Spanish
I love when a movie has a great opening sequence and this film does.When the first ten minutes is compelling it immediately makes the viewer want more and that is what the beginning of this film does. I end up liking the film a bit more because of the engaging start. Julia's eyes has such a start. We open on a neighborhood of identical houses. There is music we follow as we close down onto one house in particular house. The woman does not like the music and looks around for whoever turned it on. Not looking with her eyes as it is obvious that she is blind. The power goes off. The lead actress (Belen Rueda)stands in the dark her eyes bluish clouds of blindness. She is yelling into the dark, to the viewer it appears that she is yelling into a dark corner. There is no one there but she believes there is. Her blindness gets the viewer to believe it too. She goes down into the cellar and makes her way we think to a fuse box but part way across the floor is a stool. She seems to know what the stool is for and she climbs up atop it. A noose hangs from the ceiling and she has thought about using it before. She does not want to though with that being in the dark watching her. She addresses the darkness, "You think you can fool me. No, you can't fool me! I can feel your presence and your movements. I can even smell you, and if you think, you son of a bitch, that I'm going to hang myself while you're there..." A leg shoots from the darkness sending the stool flying and the woman struggles as the noose tightens around her neck. A camera flashes from the corner of the room a couple times capturing her death on film. Then we see a syringe kit being folded by the gloved hand of the intruder.
  Here we have the set up worthy of continuing the film. The woman obviously not Julia (also Rueda) since the title of the film leads away from that is a mystery. After we learn who she is, Julia's twin sister Sara, we still have questions that need to be answered. Why was she so willing to hang herself? It seemed she set up that scenario but why was there someone else there? Was the blindness the reason for the noose or was the harassment by the unknown person the reason? What was that syringe kit for, did it have something to do with Sara? So many questions to get the viewer primed for the main story. Julia being a twin has a feeling something is wrong with her sister and she and her husband go to the house. We quickly learn that the eye problems experienced by Sara are genetic and Julia has started losing her sight also. In a fine POV we get to see through Julia's eyes. How there are clouds of darkness as she struggles to make out the room she is in. It is a disconcerting experience to help the viewer understand her plight. Here is this woman struggling not only with the loss of her sister in an apparent suicide but also the fear that she will soon be blind. She has a loving husband Isaac (Lluis Homar) who stands by her even when she doubts her sister took her own life. Still this is a mystery and we know for it to proceed she needs to be lead towards answers.
Writer/director Guillem Morales does a fine job leading us through the story. With fellow writer Oriol Paulo we get the "next" character introduction needed to bring Julia to the next question. At her sister's home there is the next door neighbor Blasco (Boris Ruiz), his daughter Lia (Andrea Hermosa) and old blind lady Soledad (Julia Gutierrez Caba) to get her to the community center for the blind that Sara attended. From there the women of the center who are all blind help her notice that she is being followed by a man, through scent they find him out, and also that Sara had a boyfriend, a
to surprise to Julia. This leads to the Hotel Romeo, where Sara stayed at with her man friend and the character Crespulo (Joan Dalmau) and a key Sara left behind. While there the behavior of her husband Isaac raises suspicions for the audience, (possibly the red herring?). but in all doing everything that needs to be done to make a good thriller.
  There are several nice creepy and suspenseful scenes. When at her sisters funeral, Julia is sitting by the grave and mourning when a consoling hand is placed on her shoulder. Thinking it is her husband she then realizes through her foggy vision that she can see him yards away, startled she turns and find no one there. Then again after the blind women in the locker room of the community center identify a follower Julia tries to chase him through the half lit corridors of the building. Cornering in a dead end she realizes this is probably not the best idea she had. When we see the flash from the camera from the first scene we know there is danger in her decision. This before we even get to the big turn and the really suspenseful scenes. Adding to the horror for the character is that her husband first goes missing and then is found hanging in Sara's cellar with a suicide note detailing his affair with Sara. A devastating blow to Julia.
  Julia's condition deteriorates and there is only hope of an operations, It is unclear what the operation entails since part of the problem with the condition is nerve damage so what does the donor donate? retina? entire eyes? I am pretty sure eye transplants have not been successfully performed. So she is now in need of assistance and it takes the form of Ivan (Dani Codina) who is sent from the agency to teach her how to get around now that her sight is gone.
  There are a couple problems with this movie and really they start about this time. Ivan's face is never seen by us, the audience giving away that he is the killer. But then is he? where you never see him until the killer Angel (Pablo Derqui) exposes himself you can never be sure if he is the mysterious person in the shadows. As we learn the pieces of information we have been wanting to know we also see that Julia is in grave danger. Loving and kind to her Ivan is almost shown to be too good to be the bad guy but the filming choice lets us know it is not so. I suppose that they wanted us to be filled with a sense of dread but it was not the response I had. Since I knew she was in the care of the killer I just wanted to get to the climax, nothing was gained through the scenes of their relationship building for me. Secondly I really disliked the fact that she went to live in her sister's house. I understand how it was necessary for the logistics of the story but it felt way too forced. These were script decisions that make sense but I did not buy into enough. I think I would have liked it if we kept the Ivan character in full view and only slipped details of who he was in a bit at a time. It did not gain anything by outing him as early as the film did.
  Still this was an excellent film. Thrilling with a nice climax and one hell of a turn at the end and then a final fight for life that was satisfying and complete. So I liked this film a lot and maybe it will get me to include more thrillers into this blog. The horror aspects of the film were very complimentary so at least these films that straddle the line have a place here.
Rating (7.9) 5.0 and up are recommended, some more recommended than others.
 

Shiver (2008) - Horror

Shiver (2008) - Eskalofrío in Spain, is a strange film that misleads you into scares but is ultimately not what it seems. The film starts with a misleading scene, a teen boy Santi is running to stay ahead of the rising sun. He is in the shadows of the trees with his house just a hundred yards away but there is no shade to stay in from here. He runs out hood up towards the house. He struggles more and more as he gets closer only to burst into flames as he nears the door and safety. He wakes with a start from the dream. So I am thinking looks like a vampire flick. His Mom, Julia is waking him at sunset and he goes off to night school. Yep alternate universe with a vampire protagonist.

Some things are standard though, he like main characters who happen to be in their teen years is an outcast. He is picked on by the larger boys at school, they meanly put his light sensitive face on the copy machine. He has a friend, Leo who stands up for him. After such an episode he and his friend are playing a video game shooting monsters and he reaffirms my belief about the world he lives in by saying 'When I kill monsters I forget that I am one myself.' Not a bad start but then the film does not leave you out there dangling. It quickly pulls you back in another direction. He is not a vampire as we learn with a visit to the doctors but has a skin condition. Extra sensitive to light he needs to avoid direct contact or risks cancer. Mom is apparently finally going to listen to the doctor and move north where the days are shorter and the mountains will further reduce the sunlight Santi has to be exposed to.
A new start for an outcast in his current situation, things are looking up for our young man. They rent a house in a steeply mountainous area, but the music lets us know this is not the happier place the Mom and Son are looking for. The landlord is friendly enough showing interest in Julia. Since she has moved away from her slot machine addicted husband why not a really new start. Of course that music is saying something very different. In their first night in the house, we shift to what turns out to be a neighbors house and he gets up after hearing his nervous sheep. He goes out in a creepy scene to find a ewe slaughter and partly devoured. He sees something off in the distance he can not make out, Wolf? Santi? who knows right now is just the set up anyway. Later we learn this was the third sheep to go down this way. He yells at the locals like they are all supposed to jump up and run out looking for a wolf. Can't be Santi since he was not there for the other two kills.
Santi makes a friend at school, his love interest Angela. She is the daughter of the local police inspector. He also meet Tito a younger boy on the way home from school. The pacing on this part of the film really picks up and I have to say it does well for the story. Tito sees the creature but not well enough to identify it. Santi hears something on his roof in the night and is frightened, and an ominous warning from Dimas' father saying to Julia that this is not a place for her all combine to make a mood of apprehension.
Still good as far as plot. We have the boys at school talking about hunting for the creature Tito saw and Santi goes along. When things go horribly wrong and on of the kids dies at the hands on the little demon looking thing Santi ends up falling on the body. Scared he stumbles onto the road where he is seen by a car, blood covered and frazzled. This is a very well done set up. The new kid who appears outwardly different from everyone is found with the victims blood all over him. hmm I wonder if he will become the topic of rumors? Inspector Cifuetos certainly wants to talk to him.
So there you have the basic plot, there is a creature, a kid to blame for bad things happening and a police inspector trying to get down to the bottom of it. Like I said earlier this movie is not quite what it seems though. Even the stuff we are guessing and are lead towards shifts into something different and unexpected. Like many movie from Spain after the reveal of what is going on we get some sort of exposition scenes showing how the surprise was possible. In the case of this film there is indeed a feral child creature loose in the area. Santi even finds a picture of her in his house. She indeed once lived in the house he and his Mother rent. The trick to the film is how she ended up prowling the woods and eating sheep. I will not spoil it here because I want all of you to get a copy of this film and see for yourselves. There are an ample supply of tense moments and the turn is well done. Now this film could be taken as rediculous by some and the abilities of the feral child are a bit to well developed. It is strange but that is what this movie is all about so enjoy.
Rating (6.8) 5.0 and up are recommended