In the role of farm manager for Romero Country, a secluded area in Pennsylvania, Eddie has since struggled with his marriage after his wife Carla had a miscarriage. His pain is softened a little by the company of visiting friends. One day, however, a black clad man shows up with a foreign drone, and that day turns out to be highly disruptive. To Eddie’s friends, and himself for that matter, it appears as if the drone is spraying something that is somehow worse than DDT. Whatever it is they fumigate with has the farmhands looking rather frighteningly feral.
There’s no world in which Nostradamus is needed in order to anticipate the events that come after. It’s clear that Eddie as well as his family are in for a rough time, and while they try to hold on to each other, they soon get to the reality of a body overly connected and confined into a formerly quiet countryside house. They are greeted, rather viciously, by teeth-baring zombies and combat loving government agents.
It’s unreasonably tough to position oneself against the current flood of content based on zombies, just like it’s difficult when it comes to reels of first person footage. Do not fret because the intent behind filmmaker Ben Samuel’s Eyes of the Dead delivers everything that one hopers for. Samules breaks the typical format, shows everything in the maker of an 80 minute continuous shot, and aims to kill two undead birds with one stone by showcasing a sprning zombie outbeak from the eyes of a single person.
Even though it isn’t found footage “Eyes of the Dead” shifts its audience into Eddie by having the camera placed at his point of view. The movie then proceeds to stage the actors and sets in such a way that they can timer cues on long takes. Those ambitious logistics make “Eyes of the Dead” a remarkable achievement in meticulous choreography. Still, while that particular technique has the smudge marks of an unconventional idea, it is alongside a nagging shard that endlessly pricks the film´s side.
“Eyes of the Dead” is a labor of love from a devoted cast and crew whose exuberance trumps experience, which is ideal for a micro-budget project. It keeps objective in perspective and harnesses raw resources creatively. But problems with presentation begin when the concept mixes amateur drama in with lower quality sets by underscoring how exceedingly difficult it is for everyone to act in front of a camera rig, instead of to a character.
Blocking of such nature can easily be performed by the actors given that such blocking has been practiced ad nauseam. However, it does look like there is some prior concern within the actors’ minds about where they need to be at what particular time, and what they ought to do. To an extent, the swaying of the camera from side to side is ineffective since everything is moving so smoothly in spite of the fact that there is supposed to be some chaotic zombie frenzy. Even the script stands absolutely no chance of helping the virtually impossible and dubious portrayals of the characters. One look and tell could only wonder how a person gets over the death of a spouse so fast that it resembles a cloud left behind in the dust from a speeding roadrunner.
In the case of a two-person story,Eddie and Carla’s characters do not feel like the most appropriate approach for the audience through the filmmaker’s lens. Having an audience view the story through someone else’s perspective works best if that person having the experience is with the audience. However, there is a specific moment in “Eyes of the Dead” when Eddie shares a heart to heart with his wife about relationship problems, and within that talk, they end up reminiscing over certain events, only both of them know. Since the characters have moved to a different narrative space than the audience, the illusion of immersion in Eddie’s identity gets replaced with a sense of passivity, where one feels like they are an unfamiliar body. When it feels like the characters are asking you questions instead of the other way around, the first-person approach fails to serve its purpose.
As a result, there is an absence of deep and meaningful dialogue between Eddie and Carla. Their insightful words suffer grasping any chance of impact due to how the staging gives an impression of a one sided exchange. It is already difficult to feel empathy within an exchange such as theirs when depicts only one half of a two person conversation.
‘Eyes of the Dead’ shows that, just like a blade’s double edge, what may capture your attention can be equally disappointing. It literally drags the viewer through tedious moments of the zombie film as it desperately attempts to capture the one-take format. The tension is reserved; because close-ups and cuts amplify it, it leaves you doubling over in laughter as the action on-screen is ironically put forth in such an exaggeratedly comic manner. This inevitably backfires during the attempt at executing a wrestling match between zombies. Instead it is portrayed as a cringe-worthy spectacle.
Here, the POV stylized presentation is much more bothersome than it is useful. Kudos to writer and director Ben Samuels along with his crew for their unnatural yet new feel towards the story and the pretty decent practical effects from previously mentioned tales, especially the utterly fantastic but twisted scene of surgically attached zombie piglets. The performers, however, did not possess the skills necessary to do justice with the task, so now ‘Eyes of the Dead’ is just another ordinary zombie movie rather than being unique and breathtaking which the offer suggests.
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