The Squid Are At It Again: “Eye of the Beast”

This week brought some interesting news on the cephalopods front. Slate ran an article on the intelligence of octopi. The article presents arguments that octopi are so smart that they actually play. This makes octopi akin to cats or dogs in intelligence, and doubtless when the polar icecaps melt and mankind evolves into gill-men, the octopus will replace the dog as man’s best friend.

 

In other news, the movie Eye of the Beast backs my earlier assertion that squid are jerks.

 

You may recall my antipathy toward squid from my review of Kraken. This film has done nothing to change my opinion. Once more we’re treated to a big, antisocial squid generally making an ass of itself. I don’t know what the deal with squids is, but they’re in some serious need of an attitude adjustment. I guess there just aren’t enough sperm whales out there to sufficiently beat up on them (and eat them) and their big, squiddy egos have gotten out of hand.

 

Eye of the Beast opens with a feeble Jaws homage (or ripoff, you know, whatever) in which a teenaged boy is trying to put the moves on his girlfriend in a speedboat in the middle of the foggy Pacific Northwest coastline. The rebuffing of the overeager boy is interrupted by an enormous, rubbery tentacle. Things go downhill from there.

 

The next day we’re introduced to the people and location we’re gonna spend the next 85 minutes with. Eye of the Beast takes place on some fictional island where the fishing industry is quickly dying off. The locals blame the Indians. The Indians blame the white man. No one blames the giant squid. Into this tense situation comes our, er, hero, a marine biologist played by James Van Der Beek. He’s from something called NOVA, who has sent him to Squid Island to find out why the fish population is dying off.

 

Honestly, I can’t really tell you how the interim 75 or so minutes are spent. The squid eats a tourist. The marine biologist hooks up with the attractive, single sheriff. No one believes there is a giant squid stalking the island, until it attacks someone in plain sight of his girlfriend, then everyone sets out in boats to hunt the squid in a bad Jaws, uh, homage (well, give them the benefit of the doubt). If you saw Loch Ness Terror, (and I really hope you didn’t) you’ve pretty much seen this movie. Just swap in a giant squid for Nessie.

 

Anyway, the squid hunt goes badly. A bunch of people get killed, but not the doc or the sheriff, who recognize their love for one another in the dawn of a new—and squid-free—day. Apparently it doesn’t matter that you’ve gotten the crews of two separate boats killed as long as you score with the chick.

 

 The movie has an appropriately run-down, cruddy look befitting a down-and-out fishing town. As the single and eligible sheriff, Alexandra Castillo has an earthy, lived-in beauty that sets her apart from the usual made-for-TV pneumatic starlet of the week. It still doesn’t stop the filmmakers from putting her in spandex exercise pants for big chunks of the movie or for issuing her the tightest sheriff’s uniform in history. Every scene she’s in, I imagined the producers off screen hissing “make her sexier…sexier dammit!” As the marine biologist James Van Der Beek…uh…well, he breathes. Occasionally he tries acting, but he sorta has a stump for a head, so it’s pretty much a lost couse. Mostly it involves him furrowing his brow and shaking his stumplike head and delivering lines that sound like he still thinks he should be imploring Pacey to help him buy a fake ID.

 

So, there you go. Eye of the Beast. Really no need for you to see it now, unless you want to awe at James Van Der Beek’s amazing woodenness. You know, I have to wonder why movies with aquatic monsters always seize upon the giant squid. Yeah, I know they’ve been around a while and are objects of lore and legend—they’re still jerks. They have no personality. I really wish monster moviemakers would come up with something more interesting to emerge from the briney depths.