Review: Blumhouse clunker 'Evil Eye' sees little thrills

Courtesy of Prime Video

---

The “Welcome to the Blumhouse” series continues this week with the addition of “Evil Eye,” a supernatural thriller from Elain Dassani and Rajeev Dassani. “Evil Eye,” of all the flicks in this twisted anthology, strikes the timeliest chord and still doesn’t know how to explore its engaging themes. You probably wouldn’t guess this is a horror film because the first hour is a total slog and it builds to a final showdown - in the last 15 minutes - that’s not worth the hike to get there.“Evil Eye” has commendable performances and tells the story of a mother who is convinced her abusive boyfriend from many years ago has found a way to be reincarnated in her daughter’s new boyfriend.

Usha (a terrific Sarita Choudhury) only preys that her daughter Pallavi (Sunita Mani) would stop dabbling with an ambitious writing career and find Mr. Right. Being the controlling matriarch of the family whose sole purpose is to wed her daughter, Usha sets Pallavi up on yet another date, after a string of unsuccessful ones, but the suitor gets stuck in traffic and she strikes up a courtship with Sandeep (Omar Maskati), a broodingly handsome smooth talker.

It’s not long before the two get serious, discussing marriage and moving in with each other, all the while Usha’s Spidey (or astrology) senses are tingling. She convinces herself that Sandeep is a living manifestation of the stalker who almost killed her decades prior. Her suspicion is confirmed when she finds out Sandeep was born nine months after that man died. All this is happening while Pallavi falls in a deeper trance with Sandeep, bringing forth plenty of questions about whether or not Sandeep is a killer reincarnated, or Usha is going nuts.

The results are less than thrilling, and Madhuri Shekar’s script takes too long to get where the audiences knows its headed. By the time “Evil Eye” starts to ramp up tension and understand the stakes at play, it’s run out of gas, and the final scenes do little to make up for time spent understanding these characters' motivations. There’s plenty of heart in the film, and the soothing mother-daughter relationship is far more sentimental than what Blumhouse usually puts out, but “Evil Eye” is the reincarnation of cheesy horror movies with no backbone. 

Grade: C-

EVIL EYE is now streaming on Prime Video as part of the “Welcome to the Blumhouse” series