CINEMA
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THE EYES OF HORROR
OUR REFLECTION:
The key to creating great, memorable, and slightly traumatic horror is turning trivial, everyday things into nightmare sequences. One common motif terrorizing moviegoers throughout the decades of horror cinema is horror involving the eyes.
As a recent example, the horror sequel, Smile 2 may not make you think of the eyes, considering the premise of the horror film focuses on an entirely different part of the facial area. However, as with countless other horror movies, Smile 2 distorts its characters' eyes throughout the film to fuel its jump scares. In one sequence, a character's eyes (and mouth) burst out bright headlights, reminding main character, Skye Riley, of her near-death car accident.
In another, her past self is shown beady-eyed and, of course, smiling maniacally at her, taunting her to look.
The contact lens industry, of course, has benefited from decades of horror movies and masterful jump scares. By now, white eyes are associated with possession, at times zombies, while fully black eyes may indicate demonic entities and other sinister occurrences.
Veteran horror movie fans, by now, know to look away slightly or expect a jump scare when a film's shot seemingly focuses or zooms in on a character's eye — an unspoken premonition of something bad, scary, or gory about to happen to the eye. In this article, we'll take a closer look at how the eyes are used in horror and some especially traumatizing examples.
EYES IN HORROR
As we all know, maintaining good vision and eye health is crucial to living a good — or, at the very least, comfortable — life. As such, much of eye-related horrors in movies rely on disrupting this, putting human eyes in often uncomfortable, dangerous places. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean eye horror should be gory and bloody all the time.
For example, important details like pupillary distance (PD) can be used to create horror. Eye doctors constantly warn about the importance of having the correct PD measurements to prevent symptoms like eye strain, fatigue, and not being able to see properly in general. Trivial as it may sound, not being able to see clearly can create horror opportunities for filmmakers.
Horror writer and filmmaker Mike Flanagan, for example, used discreet entities and shadows throughout his Netflix series, The Haunting of Hill House, without the knowledge of the show's characters, sinister beings constantly in their peripheral vision but never in plain sight.
THE EYE
Hong-Kongese cult classic horror film The Eye uses the premise of a blind girl getting a corneal transplant to be able to see — unknowingly inheriting her donor's psychic abilities. Soon after the surgery, she starts seeing mysterious figures.
As you can see, there are lots that can be done to make the eye a horror prop. Below, we'll take a look at some more iconic uses of the human eye in horror movies.
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
While not necessarily a horror film, Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of A Clockwork Orange houses one of the most iconic eye-related horror sequences in cinema history. In a grueling classical conditioning sequence, actor Malcolm McDowell was strapped to a chair with his eyelids held open by clamps — all while his character is exposed to images and film strips of horrifying subjects. McDowell has since spoken about discovering he had scratched corneas after filming the traumatic sequence, despite the stunt being administered by a real-life doctor who regularly put artificial teardrops in his eyes to prevent them from drying out.
SAW X
The Saw franchise's Jigsaw remains one of horror's most memorable villains. In the latest Saw X installment, the film series' first ever eye trap featured heavily on the film's poster and trailers. Like many other Saw traps through the years, this one doesn't hold its punches. A hospital custodian is strapped to a chair with two long, plastic tubes attached to his eyes. If he fails to flip a dial five times — each finger being broken each time he does it — the tubes attached will vacuum his eyes out of their sockets. Of course, the film wasn't shy about showing all the glorious details in this sequence.
FINAL DESTINATION 5
Finally, Final Destination 5's take on eye horror is perhaps the most horrifying as it involves something many people have considered or undertaken. Writer Eric Heisserer stated, back when the film was announced in 2010: "I got the job with two words: LASIK surgery."
Coincidentally, a public relations director at the American Academy of Ophthalmology eased public concerns about the horror scene potentially turning people away from getting LASIK done, praising the film's fictional take on the procedure.