The horror renaissance keeps on delivering. It is a real pleasure to see the volume and variety of horror movies coming our way over the past year or so. Slashers, classic gothic, horror-comedies, supernatural spooktaculars — we’re being treated to a genre buffet full of flavors, and I am loving every moment of it. I was particularly excited to see a movie that feels like a throwback to the best of the trippy, supernatural horrors of the unfairly maligned 2000s, along the lines of Dead Silence or The Skeleton Key. A movie with dark, atmospheric visuals, a far-removed setting, and a protagonist completely out of their element. Eye for an Eye is based on the book Mr. Sandman by Elisa Victoria, and has all the charm, dread, and intrigue that I was hoping it would. Here is a movie that instantly pulls you into its orbit, with a basic enough premise that any good horror fan has seen before, but one that is delivered with such keen vision that you can’t help but feel immediately invested.
What Is ‘Eye For an Eye’ About?
Eye for an Eye opens with a text crawl that introduces The Sandman, a frightful folklore figure who is said to steal people’s eyes in their dreams. The opening scene is a wonderfully surreal nightmare sequence that does a solid job of introducing the stakes, the antagonist, and one of the key characters. We flash to the present day, where Anna (Whitney Peak) is moving in with her grandmother May (S. Epatha Merkerson), who is blind and lives in a house in the middle of a swamp (already classic horror territory). Anna’s parents were recently killed in a car accident, and it would seem that while they were alive, she didn’t have much to do with her extended family. She is now having to integrate herself with people she doesn’t really know, while dealing with the trauma of grief.
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“You can bring me the boy. You can bring me the boy. You can bring me the boy.”
Anna gets involved with a couple of local teens, Shawn and Julie (Finn Bennett and Laken Giles), who at first seem cool, but it soon becomes clear that they are Stephen King-level bullies. Anna, clearly not the best at dealing with conflict and still finding her feet in this new chapter of life, doesn’t have the confidence to stand up to the duo when they attack a young boy one day. What none of the kids know at this point is that The Sandman can be summoned to deal with such issues, and he doesn’t take too kindly to bullies. This setup gives way to one of those cathartic types of horror movies that deal with real-world problems in a very satisfying way, without ever spilling over into the campier elements of the genre that Final Destination or every dead teenager slasher ever does. It’s not really about cheering on the vengeful ghost and seeing the wacky ways he can do somebody in. It’s more of a grounded and serious meditation on the consequences of one’s actions, while still maintaining a firm grip on its audience.
‘Eye For an Eye’ Is a Wonderfully Atmospheric Horror Movie
It’s easy, given the dreamworld angle of the horror, to assume that this is just going to be another take on A Nightmare on Elm Street, and although they have a thing or two in common, this is a very different beast in all the best ways. Freddy may be an icon, but you could argue that his bitchy zingers and scenery chewing rubs the edge off of what is actually a pretty horrifying premise. So, the best thing to do is to lean into the desperation of such a premise and dial up the horror of it. Eye for an Eye does a tremendous job of this, and in the process, creates a dreamworld that is rich, visceral, and captivating.
When our characters fall asleep, they wander through worlds that sort of make sense. Snippets of their lives or recent experiences worm their way into the subconscious and manifest in ways that don’t quite make sense. A man in a rabbit costume becomes a real black and white rabbit, and when we look back, the rabbit is suddenly white. It’s all these brilliant little touches that give a true sense of nightmare to the action, and it takes a movie with this sort of thought and observational detail to make you realize how unrealistic many movie dream sequences are. They’re always too structured, too polished, and obviously symbolic, whereas real dreams tend to just be a scramble of information that our brains are trying to process. Eye for an Eye is outstanding in its nightmarish landscapes, and the use of color, visuals, shapes, sounds, and camera movements makes it feel so uncomfortably jarring.
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“You can bring me the boy. You can bring me the boy. You can bring me the boy.”
We also get some great, understated performances from our lead actors. Whitney Peak is a compelling protagonist through whose eyes we see this nightmare unfold. She is troubled and overwhelmed, but never falls into the clichés that such horror characters do by being needlessly horrible to people, or constantly panicked. Her trauma lies just under the surface, and a lot of things go unsaid, leaving it to Peak to express her fears and feelings to us through expression and body language. Meanwhile, S. Epatha Merkerson turns in a strong performance as May, and Golda Rosheuvel is particularly captivating as her sister Patti, whose dark wisdom is the catalyst to The Sandman’s latest reign of terror. These three leading women strike just the right balance of foreboding and sinister undercurrent, without overplaying it or getting too melodramatic. The realism of their performances that counterbalances the extreme surrealism of the nightmare world makes this dark world feel all too authentic.
An Unforgettable Antagonist Is at the Center of ‘Eye For an Eye’
Not every good horror needs a moral. Hell, I love me a dumb, thoughtless slasher like Friday the 13th, but the genre has always been a great playground for exploring ideas, lessons, and prevalent issues. Bullying is perhaps more prevalent than ever, having taken on a whole new form in the age of the internet. Prom Night‘s central conflict was a case of bullying among children that escalated into violence. Unfriended was a novel approach to teaching teenagers a thing or two about the consequences of their actions, both on and offline. Eye for an Eye takes a more cathartic route by putting justice in the mangled hands of a creepy folkloric creature, whose splendid design is reminiscent of Pan’s Labyrinth.
There is something riveting about the central villain of the story being a wordless humanoid who seems to lack any real consciousness. He just goes about his destiny like Anubis does, weighing the hearts of the dead. Although his backstory suggests that he should be vengeful and completely invested in the suffering of those he goes after, he has an eerily quiet, almost darkly serene quality to him that makes him all the more terrifying. There’s no reasoning with him, no begging or fighting or bargaining. He is there to do a job, and if it’s your eyes he wants, then you’re fresh out of luck.
The way the movie ends abruptly, with none of that “six months later” bullshit for one last jump scare before cutting to black, is the perfect extension of The Sandman himself. Quiet, determined, just doing its job. I absolutely loved Eye for an Eye. At a neat 100 minutes, it tells an interesting story with visual flair, a compelling antagonist, and a real eye for detail (pun very much intended). This is a truly immersive experience that makes the best use of every element of filmmaking, and it all comes together to create a uniquely chilling horror.
A darkly fantastical horror that pulls you into its web of cruelty, revenge and redemption.
- Release Date
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June 20, 2025
- Runtime
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97 minutes
- Director
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Colin Tilley
- Writers
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Elisa Victoria
- The movie is brimming with atmosphere, with fantastic production design and direction.
- Emotionally investing performances from the three leading women pull you into the narrative.
- The Sandman is a really cool, scary and intriguing villain.