Amulets, genies, demons, books, whatever it may be, anything that grants you wishes should be avoided. By now we all know it’s not going to end well, but people keep making those wishes and wishing they hadn’t. In Demon Eye it’s a necklace, in the shape of an eye naturally.
Sadie (Kate James) returns home after her estranged father kills himself under strange circumstances. She meets Dan (Robert Hamilton) who tells her father arraigned a job for her a job at the local paper. Even though she had no plans to return. She takes the job anyway.
Among her father’s possessions, she finds the Demon Eye, an amulet that allegedly can grant your greatest desire but also earn you the wrath of Padfoot and Burning Girl, a pair of demons. It doesn’t take a genius to see where this is all heading.
Almost immediately there’s weird activity on the security cameras her father installed throughout the house. On her first assignment for the paper, she sees a figure standing in a bonfire, etc. And that assignment? It involves a local nutter who starts ranting about her father’s death. Subtle Demon Eye is not.
This would all have been a lot more effective if Sadie wasn’t such an obnoxious bitch. The film’s barely started and she’s referring to Dan’s fiance as “the slut”. But a couple of scenes later he’s getting cozy with her and filling her in on local legends. The one about the amulet in particular.
That part is based on a bit of folklore from the 1850s concerning the Saddleworth Witch and is fairly creepy. That’s more than I can say for most of the rest of Demon Eye. It’s a collection of jump scares, hallucinations and assorted creepy activities strung together with no real attempt at a story. I ran across an interview with the film’s producer Jamie Cymbal where he stated
“What we learned from the last film is that we went too heavy on the story,” reveals Jamie.
Jamie Cymbal
“You have to keep the storyline thin and go for the scares. That’s what we have tried to do with this one, really.”
And writer/director Ryan Simons did just that. And it might have worked if he’d made the leads likable, and not have them acting totally illogically. But as it stands Demon Eye is just a load of cliché scares happening to people we don’t give a damn about.
Demon Eye is available on Amazon via Vertical Releasing. You can follow its Twitter account for news of other availability.