EYE FOR AN EYE Review: Violent Retribution, Painful Amends

"Just ignore them and they'll leave you alone;" "They're just insecure;" "Stand up for yourself and they'll go away:" Society has a lot of advice for how to deal with bullying, most of which relies on the victim of the bullying to do something, rather than punishing those who either perpetrate the physical and/or psychological violence, or those who stand by without intervening. It's not hard to understand wanting to exact a little justice on your own, even if that means calling down the supernatural.

One teen girl is about to find way in a rather frightening way, the cost of doing nothing, in Eye for an Eye. Based on the graphic novel and subsequent screenpkay by Elisa Victoria (the latter co-written with Michael Tully), directed by Colin Tilley, it's a moody Southern Gothic horror that works best when focused on its visual iconography and its main character.

After her parents die in a car crash (her emerging the only survivor), Anna (Whitney Peak, Molly's Game, Hocus Pocus 2) is forced to move from Brooklyn to her estranged grandmother's house in small town Florida. May (S. Empatha Merkerson, Lakawanna Blues, Chicago Med) lives alone in the old family house, accustomed to moving around it, having been blind since she was a teen. She seems friendly enough, but does little to help Anna adjust, leaving the girl to wander on her own.

This summer before her final year of high school, Anna makes friends with locals Shawn (Finn Bennett) and Julie (Laken Giles). Any company seems to be better than no company, especially when you're still in mourning, amd even if these new companions might be more immature than you would normally like. But it comes to a head, to put it mildly, when Shawn and Julie's bullying of a local child leads to a grave injury. Anna might not have participated, but she watched without trying to stop it, and so, after May's sister Patti (Golda Rosheuvel, Bridgerton) gives the kid some advice, Anna, Shawn, and Julie find themselves at the mercy of a local monster, Mr. Sandman.

A tree born of anger and injustice; a monster which deals out retribution to those who cause harm; nightmares designed to cause the most traumatic fear: this kind of iconography fits well both into a story about those who either cannot forget what they have done to deserve this punishment, or those who are unwilling to accept the responsibility. The heaviness of Florida summer air, laden with damp, branches that hang with the weight of loneliness and long-contained anger. You can almost smell the earth, and blood, that follows Anna; the film is rich in its sensory design, both visible and intangible.

A horror story that follows those who are guilty, as they are tortured (possibly until death), is a little unusual, but Anna and her situation makes this film even more so. We could argue that inaction isn't exactly complicity, and we could understand how, being the new girl in town, feeling lost and alone without her parents, her old social life and support system, and witnessing such sudden, horrific violence might make one freeze—that doesn't necessarily merit her being further traumatized, in her sleeping and waking life, by this monster. Nor is she completely innocent.

And such traumas, and the guilt that accompanies the guilty, can fester and breed, as seen in the subplot between May and Patti. While the film itself gives its rich imagery and does not try to hide the architect behind the horror, his reasons for exacting this revenge, nor his methods, it works in the filns' favour to spend time with these characters and their varying levels of culpability, how each of them tries (or doesn't) to make amends for what they have done. Peak and Merkerson really carry the film as one person trying to figure out how to repent not only emotionally but spiritually for what she has done, and one on the other end, who seems to still, after decades, refuse to accept her wrongdoing. 

Diving into the horror almost immediately, but still with a build in its visceral engagement, with strong imagery and central performance, Eye for an Eye is a solid entry to the 'guilty need to pay the price' canon of the genre, relishing in its sensory atmosphere, and the loneliness that comes with mourning and pain.

Eye for an Eye releases in select theatres in the USA and on demand on Friday, June 20th.