By David Dent
The first in house production from the Vinegar Syndrome company – who says boutique labels were on the way out? – and the independent production company Not the Funeral Home, responsible for the Joe Bob Briggs exploitation show The Last Drive In, Eight Eyes wears its exploitation credentials on its sleeve.
The film itself? A kind of mash up of ‘torture porn’ tropes, the early movies of Ti West and the kind of Euro sleaze you used to be able find in video shops back in the day. Shot on 16mm and Super 8, and filmed in and around authentically distressed locations of Belgrade and the Republic of Serbia, the spectre of war torn former Yugoslavia forms the background to the story of an American couple who, adrift in a foreign country, get way off the beaten track.
Gav (Bradford Thomas) and Cass (Emily Sweet) are a relatively newly married couple who have used the opportunity to attend a friend’s wedding in Serbia as a chance to repair the early cracks in their relationship. One of the party, an overbearing erratically behaved Serb who calls himself Saint Peter (Bruno Veljanovski), latches onto the pair and offers to show them the real country, starting with his father’s abandoned factory. Cass becomes increasingly uneasy at the attention, not to mention the company kept by their guide, while thrill loving Gav relishes the danger inherent in the history of the country, capturing everything on his Super 8 camera; right up until the point where he disappears.
Audiences feeling that the combination of miserable locations, swarthy, threatening eastern Europeans and a couple increasingly out of their depth in a strange land might be taking them down a familiar path, would only be half right. Early indications suggest there’s something supernatural at work amid the brutality, and the movie’s conclusion borrows its payoff from another genre entirely.Eight Eyes comes across as a confusion of styles and themes which doesn’t settle easily into any one genre. Yes there are thematic elements of Srdjan Spasojevic’s 2010 movie A Serbian Film here (and not just the shared geography) but it also leans towards 1970s ‘coven’ films and a whole lot more besides. Perhaps the best thing in this is Sweet as Cass; initially all city girl squeamishness, but who finds a whole different character when things get tough.
Eight Eyes screens as part of Frightfest 2023.
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