Green Eyed Monster Movie Review, Film Still and Poster

U.S. 2007
Director: Gabriel Barboza
Cast: Michael Lee Arnold, Estella Gomez, Andrea VanEpps, Nicholas Barton, Kwame Okeene, Akron Watson
Rating: Unrated
Release Date: 2007
Running Time: 1 hour 21 mins 40 secs

The Movie Review

Green Eyed Monster film still 1


GREEN EYED MONSTER
Storyline:
Cast:
Ending:
Overall:

If you hear a word like Monster put as the title of a movie, it's hard not to instantly think about big scary creatures like Dragon, King Kong, Jersey Devil, Chupacabra or probably even the Loch Ness monster, and this type of movie usually implies cheesy fun time and probably could even scare little boys. A movie that usually released by Sci-Fi Channel, if I may add. However, if you hear something like envy or in this case green with envy, one would expect a movie could turn into one terrifying horror flick, as logically a person who's green with envy could do horrifying things. Well then, Green Eyed Monster should be terrifying, right? No, unfortunately it's not. But could this horror film give its viewers at least a cheesy fun time...? Let's take a look.

Written, directed, edited and produced by a single person, Green Eyed Monster tells about a group of friends traveling to a particular destination with particular intention. They are not on vacation and they are not the typical sex-crazed teenagers. They are trying to find the missing family treasure of David and Ashley. For a total of 6 persons, Sandra (Andrea VanEpps), Raul (Akron Watson), Kyle (Kwame Okeene), Frankie (Michael Lee Arnold) and including David (Nicholas Barton) and Ashley (Estella Gomez), they gather at a secluded countryside which according to a rumor is being haunted. Apparently people know about the treasure but they don't dare to set foot on that land. The cute innocent Ashley is coming with them not for the money but simply to make her relationship with her boyfriend, Frankie to be more meaningful. Frankie, on the other hand, who is some sort of a leader of the group and is also armed, is extremely ambitious in finding the money. David and Ashley are more cautious in finding the treasure since they know about their horrible family secret involving witchcraft. Like the eeriness of the woods is not enough for the group, one by one is missing without a trace only to re-appear in a mysterious way. Who could possibly do this? Is the land really haunted? Or is it simply they let the devil grows inside them and becoming the monsters themselves?

Green Eyed Monster is similar to the typical backwoods slasher, with something killing them off one by one. But perhaps the effect of The Blair Witch Project is so strong that Gabriel decided to borrow a few elements from that movie, I tell you this because Kyle also clearly says "This is some old twisted Blair Witch sh*t, man!", plus just look at the movie screenshot on the upper-right below. So I don't know whether it is intentional or not, but there is also no gore, no nudity, and scattered clues of witch-crafting just like in The Blair Witch Project. However Green Eyed Monster might even have no tension. And by no tension is that if you already familiar with drop dead scary movies like The Eye (the original one) or other original Asian movies before Hollywood remakes stormed in the cinema, than you would probably strive hard to stifle a yawn in watching Green Eyed Monster.

Concerning the tension and reasons why I compare it with other Asian ghost flicks, because different with The Blair Witch Project, Green Eyed Monster has a few (only a few) apparent supernatural appearances presented on-screen, but regrettably those too are not further enhanced and rely heavily on Boo scares. However, if The Blair Witch Project has no music/score, Green Eyed Monster has a good creepy original score. And talking about its slasher section, all the killings are off-screen! Now, this off-screen thing could be disturbing and in some instances have a longer and stronger effect than on-screen killings a la exploitation flicks, but in Green Eyed Monster, sorry to say, they're not.

Green Eyed Monster still have some positive points though, surprisingly, the performance of all the actors and actresses are decent and even good, especially knowing that Michael Lee Arnold was doing his acting debut with this horror flick. But then again, it's not enough to make me recommend this movie for you, because the worse part is, the ending sucks. And at this time, we still left hanging thinking for what befall to the characters..., it's the kind of bad open-interpretation thing. Hopefully, Gabriel Barboza could make a better movie next time, since Green Eyed Monster has the potential for it. But for now, the video of this horror movie should just sit nicely at the shelf of video store instead being spun in your home.