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Something has
been scaring the fish away from a small
fishing community so the local authorities call in an
expert in the field to find out what's really going
on. As soon as the scientist arrives, people start to
go missing and only bits and pieces are found of them.
Could it be a gigantic prehistoric squid that's living
in the lake? Or does it all have a more logical
explanation? Well this is the Sci-Fi channel so the
answer to that is naturally no.
Why is it so impossible to make a decent killer squid
flick? The story basically writes itself and still
we're stuck with lame attempts such as "Octopus",
"Kraken: Tentacles Of The Deep", "The Beast", and now
"Eye Of The Beast". Granted, Eye Of The Beast is
slightly better than most of them but not nearly
enough to be worth checking out. James van der Beek
finds himself in yet another cheap and uneven horror
flick, it's obvious that his career after Dawson’s
Creek is quickly going down hill. I don't mind that
though since I'm not very fond of him but I do mind
that he still seems to think that he's something
special. Heck, his entrance in Eye Of The Beast was
hilarious, it looked as if they thought that the viewer
would go "Oh, look, it's him! That guy from Dawson's
Creek". Instead, most of us probably went "Oh no, him
again, can't he get any real acting jobs?".
Eye Of The Beast tells the classic tale of an oversized
squid that suddenly appears from out of nowhere to
wreak havoc in a small fishing town. This time the
squid lives in a lake where otters also swim freely,
now why would the otters survive but not the fishes?.
Anyway, since the fish seems to have vanished without
a trace, the local authorities call in Dan Leland, a
rookie scientist who recently graduated from college.
He starts to suspect that a gigantic squid is responsible
for the recent string of deaths and the sudden
disappearance of fish in the small town (because that's
the conclusion any scientist would draw to). Naturally
nobody believes him, nobody but the sheriff who's
destined to come out alive. Anyone who believes in the
crazy monster stories always survives.
This definitely isn't anything fresh but it could have
been a reasonably entertaining creature feature had it
only featured more of the creature (hey, how clever
was that?). All we get to see during the first 70
minutes or so are some giant tentacles attacking
people - and we only get to see that twice before the
big finale. The story progresses like any other
creature feature so I won't go much deeper into that
but the ending is actually rather entertaining. This
is where everything happens more or less. We get
blood, limbs, tentacles and panic. It's only a shame
that the tentacles looked like they were made out of
rubber. Oh and I was also annoyed at the fact that
people managed to cling onto the boat for a long
period of time while having tentacles wrapped around
them. Seriously, this thing is like a giant muscle,
I doubt anyone would stand a chance against it.
The squid itself - which is only revealed for about
40 seconds towards the end - looks extremely fake but
I appreciated that it wasn't made with CGI. Overall,
it's not the worst killer squid/octopus movie that
I've seen but I really wish that they would've spent
more time on the script since it did show some
potential. It's also a shame that they didn't have
enough money to show the squid more frequently and
instead had to focus on the underwhelming plot. It's
definitely not a movie you have to check out but if
you're looking for a killer squid movie, I guess you
could do a whole lot worse. So my conclusion is that
it's not a good movie - but at least it's watchable.
Some severed body parts.
I no longer review soundtracks for the Sci-Fi channel,
it's always the same music recycled from other
creature features so what's the point?
Eye Of The Beast is not a good movie but it's one of
the better killer squid movies out there - sadly. The
script is generic and the squid does look very fake
but for a Saturday night TV-flick, it's definitely
watchable. Only for fans of creature features.
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