Gothic Dark Art

Julia's eyes: More from the arena of Goth

Spain’s newly emerged gothic horror cinema continues with all its might, one must say, as it has developed a style in which genuine human psychology and rudimentary human fears remain the underlying building blocks of meticulously crafted suspense. This is a cinema in which art and entertainment go hand in hand, and “Los Ojos de Julia” (Julia’s Eyes) -- despite some of its loopholes -- should be shown as an example to any filmmaker who wishes to take the genre to the next level.

It is a dark rainy night and the electricity is suddenly cut. For Sara, this might not make much difference for she is already blind. But she feels a presence in her house and insists on talking to a lurking shadow. Neither she nor we see what or who that presence it is, but the night ends with Sara hanging herself in the basement.

Cut to the moment of another woman almost suddenly suffocating; this is Julia (Rueda), Sara’s twin sister, who feels that something is wrong.

Julia and her husband, Isaac, (played by one of Spain’s finest actors, Lluis Homar) drive to Sara’s house the next morning to discover the painful truth. But Julia feels that there is more to Sara’s suicide and when she feels the same lurking presence during the funeral she is almost sure that her sister was killed.

Furthermore, Julia’s life is literally shadowed by another happening -- that of the same degenerative eye disease that caused her sister’s blindness. There is very little time left before Julia herself will go completely blind, for she is already experiencing seizures of temporary blindness. The point-of-view shots of Julia during these seizures are filmed impeccably by cinematographer Oscar Faura, who aptly makes the viewer experience what it feels like to be in the dark when evil is watching us.

To the dismay of her loving husband and indifferent police officers, Julia insists on investigating her sister’s death, and the clues she finds lead her through a strange odyssey of suspicious people and gloomy places. The scene in a locker room with four blind women will surely give you the creepiest of chills. Eventually running by herself on a rainy night in skimpy clothes (apparently something that is still a requirement in the genre) as her sight deteriorates, Julia will find out who or what it was that led to her sister’s death.

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