Five Across the Eyes

**½ / *****

Let's just be honest...how many of you reading this are familiar with the opening...a group in a vehicle drive down the wrong road, get lost, are running low on gas, get mixed up with dangerous individual (s), try to escape from the hostile situation in one piece, receive a fair share of terror and life-threatening developments, and perhaps endure everything (or not) only to never be quite the same as before it all happened. Five Across the Eyes is no different. It is micro-budget and lo-fi. Shot almost entirely in the SUV of a young woman, along with her girlfriends, on their way home from a ballgame, a fender bender into a psychotic female motorist's van leads to an unimagined nightmare as the road trip to hell descends upon them. Normal people resorting to unexpected savagery just to survive is nothing new, either. We see an eventual beatdown and use of a screwdriver as strength in numbers becomes a necessity in order to break away.

The escalation of bickering and fear with the girls talking over each other and the nagging pointed fingers regarding leaving the scene of a wreck without addressing it with the wronged motorist and how this carries out right inside the SUV (the director decides to stay inside the vehicle and never follow the girls outside of it in an intriguing creative decision regarding shooting the story and characters claustrophobically and at a distance) we are witness to in a very confined, in-your-face manner that has us almost as flies on the wall. We see it carry out from its beginning until the very end as a body burns and bloody, wounded onlookers attempt to move on, as exhaustion, pain, and disgust remain. Can these girls recover?

 

This movie is the case where the girls (teenagers) hit the wrong vehicle. Its driver is unhinged and the representative of a husband cheating on her and damaging her family because of it. The girls are symbolic to that “other woman” and so the woman’s rage is off-the-charts. Waving a shotgun towards them, ordering the girls to exit their vehicle and strip in front of her (!), the psycho demeans them while bossing them around. Having one of the girls pee on their clothes (!) while threatening them and seeming to enjoy it within her mania, the nutjob abruptly hops back in her vehicle and drives off. Feeling violated and believing they’re in the clear as relief somewhat sets in, this will only be temporary as the motorist maniac eventually resurfaces to torment them some more. Recovering (or attempting to) from the harrowing near-death experience, members of the girls are reduced to tears, shock, and disbelief. Girls in hysterics can needle the nerves after a while, so your tolerance for shouting and crying will be tested. It makes sense considering the scenario. A nutcase in another vehicle in pursuit, honking her horn, constantly approaching and rarely backing off while teenage girls fear for their lives, unable, it seems, to figure out how to silence themselves long enough to contemplate an exit strategy. Flooring it isn’t an option that will help you long-term no matter how desperation provides that as a way out short-term. When needing to slow or stop their pursuer, the girls start tossing items out of their SUV. When that doesn’t work, one of the girls actually uses feces (!!!) which lands on psycho bitch’s windshield!

The madness doesn’t end here. A large tree blocks a section of road they need to drive and it doesn’t seem moveable. With psycho bitch still unabated by distance, they know their time is limited. Circling around and towards the unknown of the opposite direction, it isn’t long before their car is halted by psycho bitch. So the teenage driver decides to use the SUV as a weapon to prevent psycho bitch from terrorizing them in person. A blob on their windshield soon becomes a pile of psycho bitch on the ground as the SUV sends her off the hood. This sequence results in the typical norm of the film: the girls in the back of the SUV often are thrusted forward and backward because they don’t buckle up. The ashes of the father of one of the girl leaves the urn and onto the vehicle floor!

 

There’s a uniquely established scene inside the SUV where the girls leave into the woods and the camera shoots inside the vehicle, capturing what happens (or doesn’t) outside the side door. We see psycho bitch right behind, and then just the trees. We hear a shot gun blast and are left to wonder if any of the girls were shot. However, one girl is in the SUV as the others are trying to avoid a giant hole in their torso while psycho bitch is after them. An occasional blast can be heard while the lone girl in the SUV siphons gas from psycho bitch’s vehicle. It is the sacrifice of their lives in order for one of their number to assist them all once they deal with psycho bitch. A dark turn for the girls happens when one among them is sodomized by psycho bitch with the handle of a screwdriver. It turns out by film’s end that in order to rid themselves once and for all of psycho bitch they would have to put her ass down. The battle scars are quite visible as the girls, taken enough abuse and pushed too far (crow bar stab in the shoulder, numerous blows, a shot gun blast to the arm, and screwdriver in the vagina, among the war wounds), return the favor. There’s also a revelation regarding psycho bitch and the haul in her van. Also an added bonus has the girls discovering her handiwork at a recently-visited establishment. The girls, unbeknownst to them at the time, had disrupted her in the middle of a disposal of a murdered family!

 

All of this madness might be right up your alley, although it doesn’t seem to ingratiate itself to a majority of people as the imdb rating for it is not particularly extraordinary (2.9/10). I dig it myself, but the miniDV camcorder look is ugly (as the film should be, in my opinion; polish would probably interrupt its grim, nasty tone), and the acting can be a bit difficult to stomach at times. 94 minutes might be a stretch for anybody. If this had been tightened to 80 minutes, I think it could of somewhat went over a little better. But maybe not. I’m one of probably five (yes, intentional) who likes this, so I’m that small niche it won over. Perhaps I should have just kept this whole review to myself as many probably would scream from the hilltops to the top of their lungs at me, questioning my sanity and maybe judging credibility in anything I have ever written. Haha, I don’t blame you.