Customer Reviews

Eye of Beholder [VHS]

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(19)
1 star:		(95)

 

 

This movie is so bad that I'm sure that someone will like it. A twelve-year-old's idea of an "art" film. Lots of cute effects and disconnected scenes, as one crazy stalks another for far too long. For me it just went from bad to horrid to utterly awful, finishing with an ending that plumbed the depths of pointlessness....

This movie is probably the worst storyline I have ever seen. Ewan MacGregor follows Ashley Judd around for months, spying on her & supposedly keeping her safe from harm. He looks into her background - finds out she was abandoned as a child by her father, feels empathy for her - because his wife took off with his daughter. A daughter he imagines seeing throughout the entire movie. There is no real plot, other thank that and the ending is pathetic. "I wish you love", indeed! Do not waste your money or time on this movie.

...it protrays a wicked serial killer but spends most of its time focusing on how someone might sympathize with her, not on either condemning her or objectively portraying the grisly nature of her crimes. There are no grounds of sympathy for her, but the movie seems to portray her as somehow understandably worthy of sympathy, by running by us the VAGUEST suggestions that something from her past "made her what she is". But leaving that something so vague just compounds the already gross impertinance of pointing to any "reason" why anyone should treat her sympathetically. She even seduces and kills a blind man, for heaven's sake! Secondly, when we look at good and worthy movie portrayals of mass murderers, we can be confident that the actor IS acting, for pete's sake. When Anthony Hopkins played Hannibal Lecter, that WAS acting, we all know that, don't we? He was above suspicion that he the actor was just acting out his ultimate fantasy. If a movie is to be made about a female serial killer of men, it might have a chance (with better writing than this!) to succeed similarly if cast in the killer role were some versatile actress like Jodie Foster or Laura Dern. Then we could know that it was acting. But take an actress who prides herself on a self-chosen nickname of "ball-buster" and cast her in that role, and it seems less like acting than playing out her fondest fantasy! That is what makes this so grisly and macabre. If such an actress is to play a killer at all, let's at least make it seem like acting by having her kill some women as well as men, or maybe having her hijack a plane with both men and women on board, or let her pressure-boil someone's pet rabbit. But this movie must be a sort of one-up-manship that intentionally blurs the distinction between performer and role. I've sometimes liked one-up-mansnip when it was comedy, but this is just sickening. We were badly in need of seeing Ashley Judd prove that she has a human soul above the haunting suspicion that her movie roles are a terrifying window into her psyche. I still hold out hope that she will do that. But this movie is reallly a downturn in any road to that happening, just when we least needed it.

This is bleak! Ewan McGregor plays a British secret agent (known only as "the Eye") sent to spy on a diplomat's son because of a questionable woman that son is involved with. Questionable? That doesn't begin to describe it. The agent soon sees that the woman in Question, Joanna Eris, is a maniacal killer, about to stab to death the man the agent was sent to watch. Then no sooner then he finds out he's too late to save the poor man, the agent starts getting seduced by Joanna Eris like she were sweet or something. But Joanna Eris isn't sweet! She's a scum-sucking road
murderer! Then the crazed agent starts following Joanna Eris around like she's the object of his tenderest affections. Maybe in his demented way, she is. As she wanders all over the country, he follows her and becomes all the more obsessed with her, forsaking his job and everything else. What could he possibly see in her? I have no idea. Really. Guess maybe he's just got a BIG lunatic crush on her. Some people actually say they like this movie. But a lot of them say the ending is really bleak. What were they expecting? The only way I could think of to pull a happy ending out of this cinematic train wreck is if both the Eye and Joanna were sucked up into the land of Oz, where they went to see the Wizard, and he gave the Eye a brain and Joanna a heart. But that would be just TOO MUCH thinking out of the box for this cinematic toxic waste dump. It should be left where it is with an ending that fits. Why is this movie a hopeless mess that some are still messing with, wishing it had a "happy" ending? Because Joanna Eris is a mean girl, that's why! At least some of us who are mean admit we're mean. But Joanna Eris tries to hide it behind little whiny pleas, of "Oh poor me. My father disappeared on Christmas one year. So that's why I can carry a big knife among all the hapless guys who err my way and stab them all to death and squeal "Merry Christmas, Daddy!" in the most blood curdling yell ever to haunt the big screen. This is crass, man. Evil takes a cinematic form in this mess. Don't be fooled. I know this must seem like your typical lurid, short on plot or coherence, blurring good and evil, cinematic clunker. But in reality is is so much more. And less! Suck on that! e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e!

The only thing more tortureous would be to watch 2 hours of baby seals being clubbed to death.

I went to see this with my girlfriend. She would probably have kicked my --- well all my conjunctions --- if I hadn't gone. Gee I wish she had just gone to see it with her jock girl buddies instead. Because the heroine of this movie is even scarier that any of those girl jock buddies. Why, Joanna Eris, the heroine of this scary movie just goes around killing every guy she meets. I got scared. I snuck out, telling my girlfriend I had to go to the little boys' room. But really I called my mom on my cell phone and said, "Mom, can you come get me? I'm scared". When my girlfriend drags me to flicks like this, I want to break up with her. But I can't. She'd probably make like Joanna Eris and stab me if I tried. Why do movies get made about anyone like Joanna Eris? I vote someone just push Joanna Eris in front of a school bus instead!

Gee, I just had an awful thought. What if I had just landed on a spaceship from Mars, and I saw EYE OF THE BEHOLDER as my introduction to movies? Then suppose someone were to ask me what movie star I like best. I would have no answer to give exept K.D Lang! In this movie movie she keeps it all together while trapped in a twilight zone in which the world might as well be one big institution for the criminally insane, for all her contact with it goes. Yes, a movie that can make K.D. Lang look good compared to the rest of the cast is quite an accomplishment. Still, it is a losing battle. Despite her touch of sanity, sitting through EYE OF THE BEHOLDER is qutie an accomplishment too.

This had to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen. The worst part of this movie were the woefully undeveloped characters of McGregor and Judd. McGregor's character has some sick and strange obsession with Judd's serial killer. The man lost a daughter. So what? This does not explain the reason he follows Judd around during the entire movie. He protects her several times throughout the film but he also nearly Kills Her! Judd's black widow serial killer is never really explained well either. Was she sexually abused, did her mommy hit her and call her names? Any thing that could have explained her character's reasons for being who she was were left out. McGregor and Judd were not to blame for this. Their performances were the best they could have been for this trainwreck. The fault for this disaster lies with the director and writer who translated this story film. With a better director and writer this might have been a taut psychological thriller.

First, let me say I'm a Ewan McGregor fan and it pains me to find fault with any of his films, but this one is a stinker. To those who feel you must be intelligent to appreciate this film I say: I have a law degree and I couldn't begin to tell you what this movie is about. Furthermore, anything you have to watch 4 times to understand is not a good movie and certainly doesn't deserve an Oscar much less your valuable time. A good director will not make it so painfully hard for anyone to try and figure out what they just spent two hours watching. I like intrigue and suspense as much as the next person, and I even like endings that are open to interpretation. This movie, however, is not satisfying in the least. It was slow, choppy, lacking in any attachment to the two lead characters and a basic waste of time. My advice is to skip it and find a movie with a real story.

I love arty, convoluted films (Mulholland Drive, Memento, etc.) but this movie is just drek. I cannot comprehend how someone as talented and unimaginably beautiful as Ashley Judd deigned to be in this piece of ... whatever it is. It defies description. Even the prospect of seeing Ashley nude again hasn't led me to watch this a second time.