It's unfortunate how much the horror genre is looked down upon. The cinema community has historically underestimated any project that uses fear to tell its complex story, leading to scary films not being considered at big award shows, and passion projects rarely receiving the same resources as their non-horror contemporaries. Luckily, this is a medium of tough creators, whose movies are even more inspiring (and terrifying) because they don't have ample resources to create them, a situation that the minds behind Five Across The Eyes know well.
Directed by Greg Swinson and Ryan Thiessen and streaming on Prime Video, the film follows a group of young women as they are tortured by a stranger; the film documents the many hours they spend subjected to whatever humiliation this jealous individual can think of. It's an eerie film that was created using little resources, with the creators not only having a small budget to draw from but only having 9 days to shoot the entire film — something that is almost never heard of in filmmaking! But, luckily, true horror creators know how to work with what they're given, and this team capitalized on their lack of expensive cameras and special effects to remind viewers of a haunting fact: real bloodshed isn't big. It's not messy or dramatic, rather it's often the kind of quiet trauma like what these girls experience onscreen, with the makers using their minimal resources to create a hauntingly accurate portrayal of what this kind of torment, violence, and utter terror would actually look like in real life.
‘Five Across the Eyes’ Only Needed 9 Days To Be Horrifying
Image via Anchor Bay Entertainment
For all the genre's wild concepts, Five Across the Eyes grounds its horror in the knowledge that nothing is scarier than the real world. It centers on a group of five high school girls as they head home from a football game, with their easy banter and inside jokes immediately making it clear how innocent this entire group is. Their naïveté makes it that much more alarming when they notice a car following them, with viewers' worry turning into fear as they watch the vehicle start to chase after them before eventually trapping them with nowhere to go. It's here that the girls (and the audience) learn the truth: the driver of the other car is a woman who believes that these girls ruined her marriage, and she wants to make them pay for it. What follows is a distressingly realistic example of a truly deranged person trying to humiliate and psychologically break a group of young people who did absolutely nothing wrong. The restrained filming and budget means that this haunting story is told without the usual filth and flair of your typical scary movie — just like it would be in real life.
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It can be easy for viewers to forget that real harm almost never looks like the explosive gore that fills most scary movies. And while it's unclear how intentional Five Across the Eyes' restrained schedule was, the film's ability to lean into its bare-bones presentation makes it more unnerving than a dramatized version ever could be. What these girls undergo is more upsetting than a simple slasher, and the lack of pomp emphasizes to viewers how unfortunately possible it is for the things onscreen to occur in real life. Instead of a machete wielding maniac, we watch the sad humiliation of these girls being forced to strip and pee on their own clothes, of these teens having to answer disgusting questions from a complete stranger who is taking clear joy in their discomfort. The film uses its low budget to give viewers a sickeningly close view into what these girls are going through by recognizing that real terror is often quiet, simple, and cruel, a fact that audiences don't like to remember but that Five Across the Eyes' reminds them of in every scene.
Reality Is So Much Scarier Than a Horror Movie
Despite the creators being able to use it to their advantage, its undeniable how only having nine days of filming negatively impacted Five Across the Eyes. Some of these scenes definitely could have used a few more tries, and the movie's scarce attempts to inject some bloodshed into this plot leave the girls looking more like they have ketchup on their faces than that they're actually hurt. Luckily, it is able to take these flaws and use them to further the disturbingly realistic energy fostered throughout. By stripping away the cinematic veneer, it becomes an almost documentary-style showcase of just how much trauma this woman can inflict on these poor girls. Buoyed by its acting, this unflinchingly bare portrayal emphasizes the horrors being shown and makes audiences understand just how unfortunately real the atrocities they're seeing can be. The movie removes the distance between viewers and the subject matter by making itself as realistic as possible, a move that misses out on the blood and gore, but delivers extra in horrifying watchers with its disturbing possibilities.
Image by Zanda Rice
Image via Anchor Bay Entertainment
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