Picture the scene. The Big Brother House. Day 37. Jade and Adele are having a row. Voices are raised, insults fly, swearing intensifies. Then, just when you can't bear the screeching tedium a moment longer, Alex grabs a carving knife and butchers the pair of them...
Welcome to "My Little Eye". It's "Big Brother: Extreme".
Five stereotypes - a Jock, Geek, Delinquent, Shy Girl and Tramp - must cope together for six months in a remote, camera-filled house. Their every move is broadcast live on the web - they're bored, but safe. Not for long.
Strange things start happening: a bloodied hammer is discovered, an injured crow flaps about in the attic. As Danny (O'Reilly) observes, "Crows can scent death, it's kind of a bad omen to have them flying around your house." So, is the 'Company' simply trying to spook them in order to boost its website hits, or is there something more sinister at work?
Marc Evans' vicious little horror movie implicates the viewer by only providing footage from the multiple webcams. We see what the net punters see, we're thrilled by the danger, titillated by the sex, scared by the impending violence.
This isn't an original film, but it is an effective one - marrying the low-fi, immediate feel of "The Blair Witch Project" with the sort of unsettling psychological gamemanship that should have beset the recent, disastrous adaptation of Martin Amis' similarly-themed "Dead Babies".
Ultimately it fails to deliver on its intense, intelligent set-up - descending into cliché in an all-too-predictable climax - but on the way it grabs some shocks and asks some pointed questions.
"I'm here for the money," Rex (the excellent Kris Lemche) shouts at the audience, "What's your excuse? I pity you, you sad ****. What, you've got no life of your own?"
My Little Eye (2002)
