Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in Chicago, plus articles, trailers and more

 

Anguish (1987)

Director: Bigas Luna

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

A strikingly original, intricately constructed, and extremely gruesome horror film about a mother-fixated opthalmologist's assistant with an unhealthy interest in eyeballs. 'Soon' says his diminutive mother (Rubenstein), 'all the eyes in the city will be ours' - and she means it. Using creepily effective ultra close-ups and a clever Chinese box structure, Luna introduces another level of voyeuristic disturbance by allowing the events in this film-within-the-film to spill out into the auditorium (it's a case of who's watching who when?), where a teenage girl in the audience is becoming increasingly disturbed by the twitchy antics of a popcorn-eating man. The execution doesn't always match the boldness of the conception, but this post-modern shocker intelligently exploits the notion that horror is in the eye of the beholder.

Author: NF

Time Out Film Guide


What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Bigas Luna

Producer: Pepon Caromina

Cast: Zelda Rubenstein, Michael Lerner, Talia Paul, Angel Jose full cast

Genre(s): Horror

Duration: 89 mins

Related articles




Features

Do overs!

Do overs!

After Race to Witch Mountain, what should Disney remake next?

Gray's anatomy

James Gray wants to push buttons—again.

The next big thing?

Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.

Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema

So you think you can dance, comrade?

Puppet master

Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.

Socratic method

Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.

Wander woman

Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.

Oscars

Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.