Leofwine_draca Movies about sea monsters have been ten a penny since, well, time began. JAWS helped revitalise the genre in the 1970s, forever banishing memories of campy '50s B-movie and making the monster actually FRIGHTENING. Since then, our screens have been deluged with octopi, giant squids, killer fish, piranha, made-up monsters of the deep, sharks, barracudas, you name it. This cheap television movie opts for the giant squid menace, a creature already tackled more than one, most prominently in THE BEAST, a '90s miniseries by Peter Benchley, the writer of JAWS himself. So why does EYE OF THE BEAST exist? To make a buck or two. I can see no other reason for this movie. It's a completely unoriginal, seen-it-all before offering. You know the story by heart: there's a series of unexplained deaths at sea. A scientist turns up to investigate, enlisting a pretty policewoman to help. More people die. The locals are reluctant to stop fishing and there's plenty of antagonism. Eventually, evidence reveals the existence of the creature and the locals go out to sea to kill it. Blah blah blah...It's pure hokum, not helped by the efforts of a less-than-impressive cast. I liked the Chilean actress playing the heroine, Alexandra Castillo, but that's about it. James Van Der Beek, from TV's DAWSON'S CREEK, is the hero, but he still feels like an out-of-his-league teenager to be honest: he commands no screen presence, offers no masculinity. There's a sub-plot involving racial tension between the white townsfolk and the native fishermen, but nothing is made of it other than some low-key tension. This was filmed in Manitoba, Canada, but there's little to distinguish the scenery from any dime-a-dozen monster flick. They had the chance to show off the locales but they blew it.So, does this film have any saving graces? A few. The special effects are decent, for once. There are some excellent CGI animations at the climax, when we get to see the beast in all its glory, and before then some nicely animated killer tentacles. I wasn't expecting any bloodshed – this IS a TV movie, after all – but there's a cool bit where a victim's arm pops off and we see some squirting blood from the de-tentacled monster. The main problem is that this never, ever, even once goes anything near 'scary'. It's just routine, seen-it-all-before, and eminently forgettable.

Jan Strydom EYE OF THE BEAST might not be one of the more original monster movies but it is certainly one of the better films from SCI-FI channel's man eater series, because unlike a few other films that are part of this series it actually doesn't feel like a rush job such as VIPERS or a quickly thought up monster mess like YETI, this one really demonstrates some competent film making and decent effort behind it.The storyline is a lot slower than your average monster movie, this one starts off with a very casual pace taking its time with character development instead of constant attacks every five minutes or so, the acting is also above par, accept for one actor who plays the character Jordy, he over acts a bit.All in all, a good movie even though it offers nothing new in terms of originality and a worthy addition to the series and to its genre.

kiawa77 This movie is boring and predictable. It uses many horror-esquire clichés, and I was pretty much able to call who would die, when, and how in the first 20 minutes of the movie (starting with geek-boy's daddy). There were absolutely no surprises, and so watching this movie was more boring than putting seeds into peat pods (which is what I was doing while watching this). However, to the credit of the movie makers, the acting was not as sub-par as usual in Sci-Fi Channel movies. It was certainly not outstanding, but it did not have the element of cheese like I've seen lately (including the flick on right after... "Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy") Plus, who can ask for more than a fresh-water Architeuthis as the big evil monster?

Robert Morley If you accept the fact that this is a B-movie from the outset, this isn't too bad of a movie. The writing wasn't too badly stilted anywhere, the story is...well...a fairly predictable "sea monster" story, and the acting, while nothing to write home about, was certainly nothing to complain about. Of course, James van der Beek makes the movie a little easier to watch too. :)My biggest complaint about the movie, other than the obvious low-budget quality, was the straight-forwardness of it. Establish the town, figure out the relationships, show monster to viewers, nobody believes monster exists, prove monster exists, deal with it, male and female leads fall in love and live happily ever after. Wow, now there's a story that hasn't been told about a million times before!But in spite of its shortcomings, it was suitably entertaining for a Saturday afternoon where I had nothing better to do. I don't think I'd ever watch it again, but I'm not disappointed at having watched it a first time.