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A masterly 21st-century makeover of the horror genre, Marc Evans' 'My Little Eye' is a disturbing study of violence and voyeurism. By Kim Newman
Though it would be a mistake to underestimate the skills and film knowledge of director Marc Evans and screenwriters David Hilton and James Watkins, My Little Eye is a movie that coalesces out of the zeitgeist. Mercilessly charting the plight of five contestants who have been confined to a remote house to compete for a big cash prize, their every move scrutinised 24-7 by watchful internet users, My Little Eye is pitched as a horror movie for the wired generation. Shot like a live webcast - complete with steady, unceasing zooms that home in on the house's hapless inhabitants and grainy infra-red night shots - the film implicates us in the contestants' fate, putting us in exactly the same position as the putative internet audience 'out there'.
While it's likely to be heralded as a horror film as innovative as The Blair Witch Project or The Sixth Sense (both 1999), Mp Little Eye can more accurately be described as a breakthrough in that it brings into general circulation elements that have been percolating in the straight-to-video substratum for years. People have almost been making My Little Eye for some time, and it seems likely its existence will do nothing to discourage the greenlighting of a host of similar projects. Halloween: Resurrection (2002) also uses a webcast to frame its series of slashings, and due soon in the website-from-hell genre is William Malone's FearDotCom. I'd put a bet on there being as many tormented-for-the-cameras movies on video racks next year as there are now post-Blair Witch wandering-terrified-in-the-woods outings.
My Little Eye takes a classical premise and gives it a contemporary, cutting-edge twist (I'd advise those of you who wish to remain in ignorance of its nature to stop reading now). Strangers are lured to an old dark house to appear on an internet webcast for a $1 million prize (once it would have been for the reading of a will) and set against one another, with perhaps a murderer on the loose in the wilds outside and a smiling killer within the group. A surprise caller (just like the bogus asylum...