Nice one for the horror/thriller genre. I was not expecting it to be that good, even though spaniards have a history of quite nice contribution to the genre. Interesting movie, that will keep you on edge.

"Los Ojos De Julia" may be a notch below "El Cuerpo", which came out two years later and has some of the same people involved in its making, but it's still a very good thriller: it's suspenseful, atmospheric, and has some extraordinarily well-conceived and executed cat-and-mouse sequences (especially near the end when Belén Rueda removes the bandages from her eyes but has to keep pretending that she can't see). The use of light and shadow, as well as the general use of the camera in this movie, should be used as teaching tools in film schools! Rueda is a vulnerable yet strong female lead, she gives the film her all. The script does contain one hard-to-swallow contrivance - or is that two: that Rueda would prefer to go back to her house right after the operation rather than being taken care of at the hospital, and that the police would let her. I also thought the ending (spoiler!) is overly cruel to her character: yes, she survives, but she has basically lost everything. She could have at least regained her eyesight. *** out of 4.

When her blind twin sister Sara dies, Julia Levin (Belén Rueda) is instantaneously convinced that suicide is out of the question, despite what her husband Isaac (Lluís Homar) and police claim. Suffering from the same genetic illness, Julia's sight is also failing, a process quickened by stress. When the truth behind Sara's death slowly lapses into an obsession, strange things start occurring with a shadow of a man constantly lurking in the background. While visiting a home for the blind, the local janitor reveals much into the nature of this presence: 'an invisible man', a person with such a weak life aura, that he melts with the shadows, unnoticed by normal people, only noticed by people with heightened senses, such as the blind...The intriguing premise, offering some philosophical origins of conception, offers a strong backbone for the story: a faceless man, unnoticed by the world at large, not due to special skills, but thanks to insignificance. However for the most part this aspect of the story gets a purely functional treatment, utilised for its possibility of creating tension and a sense of thrill. Our perpetrator is constantly mired in shadows, unseen, lurking somewhere in the background. Meanwhile as Julia's sight falters, so does the camera - a concept used with dreaded effectiveness throughout the movie. Corresponding to Julia's growing blindness camera angles start becoming less revealing, creating a sense of lack of control, while peoples faces are entirely cut from the picture, with only voices offered to differentiate between characters.This creates a level of chilly atmosphere into the somewhat cumbersome and overly convoluted story, which attempts to introduce too many threads and dangerously languishes into melodramatic territory, but without the same sense of control offered by Pedro Almodovar. Thus soon the movie becomes more about how it was filmed, less about the somewhat poorly handled story which challenges the attention span of viewers with non-focused narrative. These plot contrivances make "Julia's Eyes" level down to slightly above average horror fare, albeit when the base concept works it does so with some thrilling panache. A shame given these moments of pure perfection are sabotaged by the overall chaotic distractions bundled into the plot.

Blind-women-in-peril movies have been around for yonks (ever since the days of WAIT UNTIL DARK and BLIND TERROR, back in the late '60s) so the Spanish-made JULIA'S EYES is nothing particularly new. Where it works, however, is in ladling bags of atmosphere into a mystery-laden storyline, leaving it an evocative and genuinely spooky viewing experience.The plot sees THE ORPHANAGE's Belen Rueda playing a woman assailed by both oncoming blindness and the mysterious suicide of her sister. The slow but compelling narrative sees her gradually drawn into a mystery involving a faceless stranger, while director Guillem Morales, who has style to spare, makes excellent use of his heroine's condition to add to the overall feel of the film.Yes, the storyline is convoluted in places, and it manages to pack in plenty of cliché along the way too; the heroine does some very stupid things at regular intervals. Nevertheless, JULIA'S EYES works very well indeed thanks to its stylistic flourishes and tense, suspense-packed developments. The ending drags a little but for the most part this is a very good Spanish chiller.