25th October 2018 | 31 Days of “Alternative” Horror: Julia’s Eyes

Stephen Radford ♫♪
4 min readOct 24, 2018

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Rarely do you think of horror and imagine such a great look as you get with Los Ojos de Julia, or in English, Julia’s Eyes directed by relatively new director Guillem Morales — who also wrote the screenplay with familiar collaborator Oriol Paulo. This Spanish language movie elevated the visual language of “point of view” sight, and it’s very much a first person experience.

Los Ojos de Julia was produced by Guillermo del Toro, which in anybody’s book stands to reason that it should be on your list, if it hasn’t already been.

The story starts out with Sara — played by Belén Rueda, who stumbles into her basement with the intention of hanging herself. Sara is blind, and has her reasons, but as she makes her attempt she realises that somebody else is in there — somebody who has been tormenting her. She doesn’t want to go through with the hanging now — not wanting to give whoever the pleasure of watching her die, but as she attempts to loosen herself from the noose, her stool is kicked away from her.

The tormentor ends the scene with the flash of a camera and then we move to Julia — also played by Belén Rueda, who is elsewhere at work collapses with some kind of a seizure. Something of a connection between herself and her twin comes into her head. She knows something isn’t right. Julia heads to her sister’s home, along with her husband, Isaac played by Lluís Homar. They find Sara’s body and then engage in the mystery of solving her death. Julia begins to experience blind spots in her vision and is also concerned that when she is left alone, that somebody else is there with her. Somebody we can only feel, sense, but we can’t quite see who it is.

The visual effect of Julia’s progressive blindness is treated in several ways: with dark patches in her point of view shots which force us to engage with the scene each time it is used. Characters reveal themselves, much to her surprise, despite being in clear view, which is achieved by camera movement revealing the character as they themselves realise, they finally have Julia’s full attention. Sound and sense… the elements that only she can truly trust appearing to startle her as it walks into frame. We are also startled, naturally, this wouldn’t be a horror film without jump scares, but here the scares are out of necessity and not used for the sake of provocation.

This is an extremely well devised thriller behind all that is considered horror. Every shot is frame worthy. Every still tells you much, and it’s because of this, you are locked in. You don’t want to look away, even when you really want to. If you ever wanted a fresh, original take on the horror genre, you can’t go wrong dipping your toe into international waters. Just as long as nobody remakes it for the US market then this film will stand on its own two feet, without dilution.

I believe two people, whom film lovers recognise, would have loved this movie: Both Alfred Hitchcock and François Truffaut would lose their minds on the suspense, the satisfaction of pleasing our friends, the plausibles, and the gift of story, motion, sound and vision.

You simply can’t take your eyes of the screen. Every moment seems vital.

Written by: Stephen Radford
website: stephenradford.com

Next: 26th October: High Spirits

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Stephen Radford ♫♪
Stephen Radford ♫♪

Written by Stephen Radford ♫♪

Author, writer Editor, and Story Developer. Podcast, Radio, Film, Music, and Performance — workshop tutor and professional writing mentor.

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