Eye for an Eye 2025 Movie Review
Although we’ve seen plenty of adaptations of mainstream comics, we see far fewer of indie comics. Yet, there is an untapped well of creative potential in the plethora of options. Based on Elisa Victoria’s graphic novel Mr. Sandman, the horror flick Eye for an Eye has an interesting concept and visual style to spare but struggles to find its identity.
Adapting Victoria’s graphic novel, Victoria and co-writer Michael Tully pen the screenplay following a young woman who returns to live with her grandmother after the death of her parents. However, after she witnesses a grisly act of violence, she finds herself facing a sinister threat deeply entrenched in the local community’s lore.
Ultimately, the biggest issue of Eye for an Eye is that its script can’t seem to decide what side of the horror genre it wishes to fall on. Parts of it seem to favor the cerebral, abstract psychological horror of the art house, but the story often more closely resembles the schlock of the bargain bin. It’s this oscillation between the near-nonsensical and the generic that keeps Eye for an Eye from ever connecting.
Because the story struggles to split the difference between cheap thrills and atmospheric unease, it becomes difficult to stay invested in Eye for an Eye. Even at just over 100 minutes in length (just over 90, when you subtract credits), it’s a bit of a chore to get through. There aren’t enough high-octane scary moments to carry the film, but its attempts at broad scares disrupt the flow of any attempts it would have made at something more restrained.
The themes of the movie also could have used a much tighter focus. There is an interesting message to be found here about bullying — something that does feel refreshing and unique within the canon of horror films. But instead, the script falls back on the same old tropes about grief and trauma that every indie horror in the past decade has explored.
This might not be such a problem if the movie gave us characters that were a little less conventional and more fleshed out. But the characters in the film fit the archetypes that have always existed in the teen horror subgenre. The protagonist is an outsider with a mysterious connection to her new home and its dark past. She is surrounded by allies and bullies who bite the dust in spite of or because of their transgressions. Every adult in the movie (of which there aren’t many) is harboring a secret.
The performances in Eye for an Eye are a mixed bag. Whitney Peak (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) is fine but doesn’t make much of an impression in a role that could have benefitted from a more scream queen-like approach. Finn Bennett (Warfare) is frankly awful as the town bully, giving a performance that is blandly over-the-top and feels like any horror movie bully you have ever seen before. The standout in the cast is Emmy-winning actress S. Epatha Merkerson (Law & Order), who channels every ounce of creepiness the film has to offer as the Lin Shaye equivalent here.
That being said, Eye for an Eye is not a total waste, largely thanks to the talents of first-time director Colin Tilley behind the camera and source material that clearly had a lot of potential. The concepts in the movie — namely Mr. Sandman, the graphic novel’s eponymous monster — are genuinely spooky, and that’s not something that just comes naturally. It takes some genuine creativity to create a horror baddie that doesn’t feel entirely derivative, especially when the story itself so frequently reverts to the tropes.
The other aspect of Eye for an Eye that is consistently effective is the imagery. Of course, with the film being adapted from a graphic novel, some credit needs to be given to the source material, as some of those images had already been illustrated. However, Tilley’s background is mostly as a music video director — and a prolific one, at that, having worked with numerous recognizable artists like Lizzo, SZA, Justin Bieber, J. Balvin, and more — and he brings the hyper-stylized, kinetic approach of that medium to his feature debut.
Still, it feels like much of this visual panache and interesting concept is wasted on a film that feels far too bound by conventional narrative. If Eye for an Eye were more willing to lean into the dreamscape (or nightmare-scape, if you will) nature of its premise, this could have been something genuinely special. But in trying to fit the formula of a conventional teen horror picture, it ends up feeling disposable despite its impressive style.
