Eyes Without A Face (Les Yeux sans visage) (1960)

It doesn't add up to anything terribly important, but Georges Janu's prefunctory 1960 horror is a visual pleasure and obvious inspiration for myriad horror movies to come - Vanilla Sky, Eyes Wide Shut, Halloween, Get Out, and The Silence of the Lambs are some of the horror movies I was reminded of watching many memorable scenes: a hard-to-watch face transplant, for example, and the haunting sight of a masked Ědith Scobe as Christiane picking her way through a mansion, its gardens, and dog kennels, like a bizarre marionette.

★★★★☆

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Afraid of the Dark (1991)

This always intriguing London-based psychological drama, which starts off being a mystery thriller about a series of escalating attacks committed against the members of a community of blind women, turns up not to be about what you think it is - which is a shame because when the movie inverts suddenly halfway through, making you feel like you've finally had the bandages removed after an eye operation, part of you wishes the first half of the story continued --- although the second half, centred on Lucas, a young boy with a worrying imagination, is equally creepy and compelling.

★★★☆☆

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Secret In Their Eyes (2015)

This is a thriller about a 13-year-old murder case reopened by a retired FBI agent but the plot of the superior 2009 Argentinian original has been convoluted with some stuff about terrorism probably meant to add contemporary richness but which in fact just muddies the main story, and while Chwetel Ejiofor and Nicole Kidman and Julia Roberts are fine, the movie is not the same without Ricardo Darin's shrewd face and sparkling eyes adding some humanness to the grim subject matter.

★★★☆☆

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