Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

One Eyed Girl Blu-ray Movie Review

Damage

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 14, 2015

One Eyed Girl is an independently produced Australian psychological thriller where it's often hard to tell who's the hero and who's the villain. Arguably they're the same character. The question that remains open until the very end (and maybe even then) is whether he can ever pull himself out of the downward spiral to which his life seems condemned, for reasons that are continuously redefined throughout the film. The writer/director, Nick Matthews, and his co-writer, Craig Behenna, who co-stars, wrote numerous drafts, and producer/editor David Ngo struggled in the editing room, to achieve the right balance between external action and internal reflection so that the audience has the opportunity to experience a troubled mind in a state of constant flux. It's a unique and original achievement.

The creative team notes in the Blu-ray extras that they banned certain terms during production (although they laughingly admit that those same terms are impossible to avoid when discussing the film). One such term was "flashback", since the main character of One Eyed Girl is constantly recalling past events, but these recollections are not included for the usual purpose of flashbacks in film, which is to fill in background information. They are there to show the powerful influence of memory on the present, as it erupts into daily life, irresistibly distracting us with fragments of the past (or what we feel about the past). Another prohibited term was "cult", because the group with which the main character becomes involved cannot be so easily pigeonholed. It lacks the formal structure and the economic incentive of a typical "cult", as well as any mission statement for the outside world. At least on the surface, it's nothing more than a group of drug addicts for whom conventional treatment has failed and who are trying a last, desperate alternative to kick their habits.

One Eyed Girl premiered in October 2014 at the Austin Film Festival, where it won the Dark Matters Feature Film Award. An Australian theatrical release followed in April 2015, where David Ngo was nominated for an Australian Screen Editors Award. In the U.S., the film is being released by MPI's Dark Sky Films. I strongly recommend it, with the disclaimer that not everyone will like it. More than most, the film serves as a Rorschach test for the viewer. What you see in it will reflect yourself.

The central character of One Eyed Girl is Travis (Mark Leonard Winter), a psychiatrist employed by a state-operated facility in an unidentified city in South Australia. (The film was shot in and around Adelaide, with exteriors picked up in several other cities.) His daily routine involves a succession of patient interviews, but otherwise his life is solitary. Inside Travis' head, though, a disjointed movie plays non-stop featuring a former patient named Sarah (Sara West). It quickly becomes evident that Sarah's therapy was unsuccessful, a fact widely known among the patients on the ward, including Dean (Nick Bennett), who doesn't hesitate to mock Travis with his failure.

Travis leaves his job for complex reasons, including his own loss of faith in his ability to make a difference. By an equally complex path, he becomes involved with an informal self-help group that he has seen handing out leaflets on the train he takes to work. The group has no formal name or philosophy, just a general belief in taking control of your life and returning its members to the inspiration that first fired their imagination, which, in Travis' case, was to heal people. The group's founder is a former soldier named Jay (Steve Le Marquand), who returned from a tour in Iraq suffering from PTSD and drug addiction, but emerged after several years of struggle with the desire to help others battle their demons. Acquiring a farm in the country, Jay transformed it into a communal refuge of peace and quiet where those for whom conventional therapy has failed may come and go as they please, so long as they carry their weight and make a sincere effort to reform. Since Jay only takes people who have run out of options, everyone stays.

Travis is initially skeptical of Jay's methods. It's certainly a red flag that so many in the group address him as "Father" Jay, and Travis' professional training revolts at the sight of a new arrival, Marcus (Matt Crook), being forced to make a humiliating public confession. But Travis' own desperation is so great that he finds Jay's methods seductive even when they're painful. In essence, Jay has adapted the kind of physically stressful training used by the military to break down individuals so that they can be rebuilt into fighters, except that the fight he's training them for is against their own worse nature. Despite Travis' resistance, he stays, earning the approval of Grace (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), who is attracted to him, and even of Tom (co-writer Behenna), one of Jay's most loyal followers.

Not surprisingly, however, there are flaws in this improvised paradise, and Travis is the only one who insists on talking about them. When he does, he sets off a destabilizing chain reaction that leads to shocking but entirely logical consequences. Throughout One Eyed Girl, characters refer to the human soul: whether it exists, how it reveals itself, whether it can be saved. Often these speeches sound like the overwrought rambling of a person teetering on the brink of sanity, but there are moments when the discussion seems scarily pertinent, conveying the sense of a soul being revealed and tested before our eyes.

The film's title comes from the first image that occurred to director Matthews in writing the project, that of a young woman running across a field crying: "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed girl is queen!" The finished film contains no such scene, but it retains both the line and visuals suggested by it, as well as a profound ambivalence about the limits of sight and the validity of revelations, even those that feel profound and transforming. One Eyed Girl may not be a horror film, but it ends with the kind of eerie ambiguity for which horror films strive. Are we looking at an innocent saved from peril or a future monster waiting to be born?

One Eyed Girl Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

One Eyed Girl was shot by cinematographer Jody Muston primarily on the Arri Alexa, with numerous pickup shots captured on a handheld Blackmagic 2k unit operated by director Matthews. After extensive color correction in post-production, the interweaving of these two sources appears to be seamless. Dark Sky's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced directly from digital files.

The Blu-ray image retains the organic, film-like quality for which the Alexa is noted while remaining sharp, clear and detailed. It should be noted, however, that both Muston's lighting and choices made in post sometimes deliberately soften detail for the sake of atmosphere. In the film's first act, when Travis is still working as a psychiatrist, the lighting is frequently harsh, the contrast stark and the palette cold, as Travis finds his surroundings increasingly difficult to tolerate. The memory fragments that intrude on his consciousness are much more warmly colored, but they are also dimly lit and often indistinct, to convey the unreliability of memory. The exterior palette gradually warms, and the surroundings become clearer and more focused, as Travis becomes acclimated to country life on Jay's farm. The interplay of color, light and shadow shifts radically in the film's final act, in ways that cannot be further described without major spoilers.

MPI and Dark Sky have placed the 103-minute film on a BD-25, achieving an average bitrate of 19.99 Mbps. Though somewhat on the low side, the average bitrate is attributable to the material's digital origination and a significant number of relatively static shots that have allowed bits to be conserved for several sequences of intense, rapid action.

One Eyed Girl Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

One Eyed Girl's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, does not provide opportunities for the kind of showy surround effects of an action film, but it still takes advantage of the multi-channel format to provide an immersive sense of environment that shifts with the action and the characters, especially during scenes in the country. An extended bonfire sequence, where two characters begin a conversation near the fire and then move away from it, is an especially good example. The transitions between Travis' interior thoughts and his external actions are smoothly managed so that the sound cues help distinguish the two states but the transitions are not jarring or abrupt. The sounds of city life (traffic, building HVAC systems, etc.) contrast sharply with those of the country (such as wind, insects and trees). Several sequences involving train travel are appropriately loud when necessary. The track's dynamic range is broad with deep bass extension.

The dialogue is clearly rendered, although some of the regional accents are thicker than others. English SDH subtitles are available if needed. The score by Michael Darren (his first feature film) is a subtly mournful affair that integrates smoothly with the film's sound mix.

As is routinely the case with Blu-rays released by labels affiliated with MPI, an alternate PCM 2.0 track is also included.

One Eyed Girl Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Writer/Director Nick Matthews, Writer/Actor Craig Behenna and Producer/Editor David Ngo: This is a valuable and informative discussion among the three principle creative forces behind One Eyed Girl that covers all aspects of the project, including writing, casting, production and editing. In addition to discussing their artistic objectives, the trio describe numerous approaches they tried and rejected (e.g., what they describe as "The Fugitive opening", which introduced key thematic elements but left the viewer expecting an action thriller rather than an emotional drama).



• Featurettes (1080p; 1.78:1): Each of these short clips focuses on a specific aspect of the film, using numerous interviews with cast and crew. A "play all" feature is included.
• Cast (4:17)
• Music (2:45)
• Production Design (3:08)
• The Beginning (4:04)
• Train (3:12)



• Trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 2:03): "In your darkest hour, would you turn to them for one last chance at salvation?"



• Bonus Trailers: At startup, the disc plays trailers for We Are Still Here, Mexico Barbaro, Applesauce and Deathgasm, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

One Eyed Girl Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

One Eyed Girl is the kind of film that could only be made and released independently. It does not fit neatly into a genre "box", is difficult to describe in conventional terms and would be a challenge to promote for wide release. It will have to find its audience on home video. Fortunately Dark Sky has provided a good Blu-ray treatment, because the film deserves to be discovered. Highly recommended.