SpuffyWeb
Sadly Over-hyped
ReaderKenka
Let's be realistic.
PlatinumRead
Just so...so bad
ScoobyWell
Great visuals, story delivers no surprises
Leofwine_draca
Movies about sea monsters have been ten a penny since, well, time began. JAWS helped revitalise the genre in the 1970s, forever banishing memories of campy '50s B-movie and making the monster actually FRIGHTENING. Since then, our screens have been deluged with octopi, giant squids, killer fish, piranha, made-up monsters of the deep, sharks, barracudas, you name it. This cheap television movie opts for the giant squid menace, a creature already tackled more than one, most prominently in THE BEAST, a '90s miniseries by Peter Benchley, the writer of JAWS himself. So why does EYE OF THE BEAST exist? To make a buck or two. I can see no other reason for this movie. It's a completely unoriginal, seen-it-all before offering. You know the story by heart: there's a series of unexplained deaths at sea. A scientist turns up to investigate, enlisting a pretty policewoman to help. More people die. The locals are reluctant to stop fishing and there's plenty of antagonism. Eventually, evidence reveals the existence of the creature and the locals go out to sea to kill it. Blah blah blah...It's pure hokum, not helped by the efforts of a less-than-impressive cast. I liked the Chilean actress playing the heroine, Alexandra Castillo, but that's about it. James Van Der Beek, from TV's DAWSON'S CREEK, is the hero, but he still feels like an out-of-his-league teenager to be honest: he commands no screen presence, offers no masculinity. There's a sub-plot involving racial tension between the white townsfolk and the native fishermen, but nothing is made of it other than some low-key tension. This was filmed in Manitoba, Canada, but there's little to distinguish the scenery from any dime-a-dozen monster flick. They had the chance to show off the locales but they blew it.So, does this film have any saving graces? A few. The special effects are decent, for once. There are some excellent CGI animations at the climax, when we get to see the beast in all its glory, and before then some nicely animated killer tentacles. I wasn't expecting any bloodshed – this IS a TV movie, after all – but there's a cool bit where a victim's arm pops off and we see some squirting blood from the de-tentacled monster. The main problem is that this never, ever, even once goes anything near 'scary'. It's just routine, seen-it-all-before, and eminently forgettable.
GL84
Arriving in a small fishing village, a researcher trying to investigate a local problem finds the cause to be a monstrous squid living in the waters and teams with some locals to try to stop the creature' rampage.As a whole this was a decent overall creature feature. One of the better aspects is the pretty decent work it features as a build-up to unveiling the creature with a couple of impressive routes to get there. The first half is mostly based on the dueling plots featuring both the creature's attacks and the concurrent search on the outer edges of the story that picks up traces of those encounters yet never makes definitive contact so it remains elusive. The random attacks on the couple in the boat or the family on the beach make up decent enough attacks while the search at sea makes for plenty of exciting times here as the technology tries to catch-up to the creature comes of nicely. The discovery of the claw- marks is the kick-start into this revelation and it allows the great revelation all its great impact when it proves them right. The other big plus here is the main battle with the creature at the end, which finally gets them up-close with the creature battling pretty realistic props for the tentacles coming onto the boat and leaving some rather fun tactics of fighting them off as well as some gory tactics here for the creature's attacks which make this all quite enjoyable. These here are enough to hold this up against the few small flaws in here. One of the main issues here is the first half to this really having so few worthwhile moments that the pace really suffers in here with the constant talk of her need for affection and the on-going war with the local tribes against the fisherman takes up main parts of the opening. In effect, these issues combine together into such a huge portion of the story that they effectively push the creature out of the first half, and while these do a great job of creating a believable building point for the creature's appearance these are hardly all that interesting all so it really tends to drag this down somewhat. The other big thing holding this one down is the creatures' actual appearance which clashes horribly with the lone sequence we see a full view of it. The creatures' prosthetics look quite good, but there's a dramatic shift when the CGI based full-size creature appearance, and these are what really keep this from its best parts.Rated R: Violence and Language.
TheUnknown837-1
Out of all the really bad science-fiction creature features that I see quite regularly on the Sci-Fi Channel, there are very few of which I can describe as descent. "Eye of the Beast" is one of those few that is surprisingly good enough to be called descent. The acting is fine, the screenplay is more intelligent than others I can think of, the special effects are better than expected, and since they are mostly shown at night, they are easier to believe. The creature is effectively not shown mostly until the end. Before then, we see nothing of it except for its tentacles (rubber, inflated) that lash out and grab onto people. The plot is kind of ludicrous. A giant squid SOMEHOW gets into a lake and SOMEHOW is not seen until now when it just decides to try human fresh off the docks, but still, it's a B-movie, so can cut it SOME slack. The characterization of the characters is very good, there are some very well-done dialogue and dramatic moments, and the music score really aids it. Ultimately, we have a climax that we really care about, speeches that are actually well-written and don't outstay their welcome (as they do in another B-flick called "Sasquatch Mountain"), and overall, "Eye of the Beast" is a very well-done creature feature. I recommend it for fans of its genre.
black_wolf_1970
This movie is fairly good it develops the characters well gives a real feel to the problems facing small fishing communities and local native Indian tribes. The theory that all myths are based in some fact and we do not always know everything of the world around us. You feel sorry for the victims but also see that the victims were that because of over fishing driving a Giant Squid to find new sources of food and that being humans. The squid is a killer of humans but also is just doing what it has to to survive, so in away it was also a victim of the film as much as the humans it killed. Of course the scientist who finds it tries to get help but is not believed as giant squid do not live in fresh water lakes and they play it safe and bury their heads. This has a lot of good properties to it even being a "low budget film" but it works out well.