Julia's Eyes (2010)

Julia's Eyes (2010)
aka: Los ojos de Julia
Director: Guillem Morales
Writer: Guillem Morales, Oriol Paulo
Cast: Belén Rueda, Lluís Homar, Pablo Derqui
The story of a woman who is slowly losing her sight whilst trying to investigate the mysterious death of her twin sister.

Second feature from director Guillem 'The Uncertain Guest' Morales, sadly this stylish Spanish horror thriller fails to reach its true potential due to using far too many well established genre clichés. The story follows Julia as she tries to uncover the real reason why her sister Sara as suicide. Turns out both the sisters suffer a medical complaint that could them to become totally blind. At first her loyal husband and soul mate Isaac helps her get over the loss of her sister, but as Julia starts to delve deeper she learns Isaac could be involved in Sara's death.

Julia's Eyes is extremely glossy and well filmed yet the twists are too obvious. As a viewer instead of being surprised I felt more at times like I was being manipulated. One example being the moments you never see a characters face, and not just for flashes but whole scenes for minutes at a time, another being all the fake glimpses of things Julia could of seen or maybe imagined. Not sure how involved Guillermo del Toro was with the production (possible he was just a name added to help sell/hype the movie) but it never reaches the glory of his other work. I don't want to be too negative as its still a great little horror film, some of the set pieces are fantastic, one of the more memorable grisly moments was when we see a needle going right into an eyeball. Not fantastic there's dozens of better Spanish horrors kicking around, films from directors like Jaume Balagueró & Nacho Cerdà spring to mind, but Julia's Eye's is still above average and well worth the view.

(6½ out of 10)