Dawn Breaks Behind The Eyes (2021) Review

A couple inherits a rundown castle and decide to spend the night there as they decide what they should do with the place. However, they soon discover they are doomed to be trapped there forever until an event occurs which presents a possible opportunity to break that spell.

The opening of Kevin Kopacka’s giallo-infused serving of psychedelic thrills comes across as a little too mannered, even slightly clunky, in its script and performances and if the effect of this throws you off to the point where you’re thinking of taking an early exit – don’t. Stick with it, there’s a reason it feels like there’s something off and you’ll find out why soon enough. If at that point you still want to bale, that’s your prerogative.

It’s an intriguing concoction, to be sure, becoming a story about a story and of how tales can be told and retold with the inevitability of a particular resolution subverted only by a realisation that one can write their own ending from seizing their own agency in order to change the well-worn plot. As thoughts drift in concerning just how this two-hander of a set-up could possibly be stretched to feature length, both time and reality shift and it all proceeds down that route marked “meta”.

For anyone still reading after the final word of that previous paragraph, Dawn Breaks Behind The Eyes has fun with its structure rather than disappearing up its own, er pretentions, allowing itself to conjure up a recognisable setting that’s ripe for plenty of broad satire focused on those who inhabit that particular type of world. The descent into debauchery is hardly surprising but it’s handled more artily than you might expect considered the numerous opportunities to turn on the sleaze tap.

The self-referential nature of much of the dialogue runs the risk of becoming an irritant, whether it’s foreshadowing – there’s a focus on how a particular ending doesn’t appear to fit – or discussing the perception of time, specifically how certain events feel like an eternity (see paragraph one). To offset the deliberately arthouse leanings and the more ephemeral elements of the narrative you do get drink, drugs and a dick ripping. This is a horror movie, after all.

Fans of hazy, colour-saturated 1970s Euro weirdness or folks who clicked with early Jose Ramon Larraz films will find plenty to enjoy about this and although it’s unlikely to convert the undecided there are moments of unadulterated oddness which are extremely difficult to ignore. The performances are in tune with the tone of the piece and the almost constant question of what is and isn’t actually happening will either fascinate or frustrate, or maybe both within the same scene.

It’s difficult to go into much more detail about Dawn Breaks Behind The Eyes because it deserves to be seen without a great deal of explanation, even if you feel you need an explanation once you’ve seen it. Ticking all of those subgenre boxes, right down to the perfectly crafted title, it’s both a loving pastiche and a commentary of a movie type even before you drill down to its discussion of story dynamics and the characters who drive or are driven by them.

Dawn Breaks Behind The Eyes gets its theatrical release from Fractured Visions on 2 Dec 2022 with its UK home entertainment release set for Feb 2023.

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