MY LITTLE EYE
UK, US/Canada, 2002, 95 minutes, Colour.
Sean C.W.Johnson, Kris Lemche, Stephen O' Reilly, Laura Regan, Jennifer Sky, Bradley Cooper.
Directed by Marc Evans.
After the critiques of audiences being voyeuristic in their television watching (The Truman Show, EdTV, Pleasantville), television itself became more real than real with the spate of programs like Big Brother, Survivor which dubbed themselves 'reality tv'. Audiences were caught up in the personalities, their characters and idiosyncracies and hurried to add their phone votes to exclude the competitors they loathed and buoy up their favourites to win big money. A small American film of 2000, Series 7 - The Contenders, took the imagination a step further with a show where the competitors took the excluding of others into their own hands: they tracked, outwitted and killed their opponents.
Now comes a small British film, made in Nova Scotia with an American cast, which takes reality tv even further - to the Internet. Filmed with several video cameras, the film is edited from a wide selection of shots, all of which are the equivalent of the view from a surveillance camera. This gives the film a rough and ready, realistic look as video and live internet broadcast material.
Five young adults agree to live in a house together for six months. Towards the end, even though they seem to have survived well enough, things go awry with mysterious parcels, an even more mysterious visitor, and deaths. It is the IT equivalent of those old dark house thrillers, except that this is real and is being downloaded on subscribers' computer screens.
Bradley Cooper, at the beginning of his career, moved into television but later a successful career in movies.
Watching it all is a very uncomfortable experience, especially when director Marc Evans uses moody sounds to unsettle us, indistinct dark images and a couple of nasty shocks. In fact, the whole thing is a rather nasty caution about being gullible and about the unscrupulous clients who want to see a pornography of violence.
1. Thriller? The genre of The Old Dark House? The elimination of various characters?
2. The era of social media, programs on Internet, websites?
3. The found footage style, popular at the time, the use of handheld camera, different angles, Web Cam and bleached colour, white noise and sound, contribution to the atmosphere of the film?
4. The popularity of reality TV? Big Brother and similar programs? Issues of who organises and produces these programs? Who finances? What are the motivations for people to agree to the conditions and participate? Who watches the programs?
5. The situation, five young people, for six months, in the house? A million-dollar prize? The conditions, all having to stay? The setup for audience anticipation, for thrills, the mystery?
6. The five young people, the characters, typical, men, women? The personalities? Interactions? Time passing, boredom, tensions?
7. Pressures to leave, the death of the grandfather, the grandson wanting to leave? The money? The pressure from the others? The visitor, not knowing about the program? The policeman?
8. The change of atmosphere, blood, knives, deaths?
9. The intricacy of the mystery? Responsibility? Tension, the solution?
