The Third Eye (2007)

directed by Leah Walker

Canada

91 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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I'm not even sure why I'm reviewing this because it's probably only of interest to me and like five other people, but I was so surprised to actually like it after it almost lost me in the first few minutes that I just want to talk about it. This might be the first review of it online, but admittedly I've barely done any digging to find other reviews.

So there's really no good way to describe this movie because anything I say about it is going to make it sound way more bonkers than it actually is. And I guess it is kind of bonkers, but the concept of it and the way it's executed are very different from each other. Basically, this is about a woman struggling to come to terms with her brother's death, which many around her are blaming on either an overdose or a suicide, which for all intents and purposes it appears to have been. But that explanation leaves her with questions, and here is where this movie gets bizarre - she finds out that her brother was interested in self-trepanation, and that he may have been involved with people who could have helped him with it. This movie is about trepanation. Like, as in cutting a hole in your skull. And somehow, I don't know how, it manages to deal with the topic as if trepanation - referred to by some of the characters as if it's a hot new street drug called "Sight" - is the newest fad among those hip and in-the-know. On paper everything about this sounds ridiculous, but it's laid out in a reasonable and believable manner, and again, I really don't know exactly how Third Eye manages to pull this off.

The reason it almost lost me as soon as I started watching was because this entire movie is so solidly caked in an aesthetic very specific to the early-to-mid-2000s that I initially assumed it was going to be a try-hard, shallow affair. I am also not sure how to describe this aesthetic other than to say that if you're familiar with it, you know it. Leather wristlets, spiked hair, dark clothing, combat boots, fingerless gloves (at one point the main character wears fingerless gloves over regular gloves), and anybody of any gender wearing heavy eyeliner. It's not quite punk but it's also not not punk. The music they listen to isn't harsh or crusty enough to be punk; it's more like industrial, but for the most part I think these people can best be described as emo. This pervades everything about this movie, and if you're not willing to humor something so stuck in 2007, it'll chip away at your ability to enjoy the film.

But there is something that feels so genuine and unapologetic about this that as soon as I recovered from the shock of seeing so many low-rise cuffed jeans and unnecessary vests being worn over long-sleeved shirts I realized that this didn't have the vibe of something that was just for looks, it felt like an extension of the people who had made the film. Being as this is clearly a low-budget project that was written by a brother and sister, I feel like it's more likely that this is just what the filmmakers were personally into, and they had the freedom to make this movie look exactly how they wanted it to look without the influence of major studios who they had to acquiesce to because they were getting funding from them. It doesn't feel like it's appropriating an aesthetic. It just is that aesthetic. Something about it made me feel deeply nostalgia, which is weird because I'm 23 and too young to have been emo.

Getting over the look of it also let me realize that the writing and the plot is not half bad. It takes itself seriously enough that it made me take it seriously too. I liked the main character a lot: She felt like a genuine, complex, flawed person, with her own agenda that motivated her and a refusal to cave to either the viewer's expectations or the expectations of other characters. She was a rare well-written woman character in and amongst a bunch of really badly-written women characters I've been watching lately. The situation she's in is also dealt with well, and nothing feels soppily sentimental - it all feels real enough. And fortunately, there's not too much stigma put onto drug users and addicts, as there can often be in any movie that concerns an overdose. It doesn't really talk a lot about drugs in general, even though they're always there. This is a movie about trepanation, first and foremost.

The last thing I'll say is that this seems to be getting lumped into a lot of lists of horror movies, mostly, I'm guessing, by people who haven't actually seen it. It sounds like it should be a horror movie, and I was kind of expecting it to be one too, but it's really not. I would just call this a drama - no genre elements here. The fact that it involves drilling holes in your skull (and your buddies' skulls, if they want it bad enough) is pulled off as naturally as the subculture it's set in.