That Cold Dead Look in Your Eyes (also known as Tes Yeux Mourants) is a New York based French language somewhat experimental horror written and directed by Onur Tukel (Summer of Blood, The Pigs). The film has been at a number of festivals, winning over fifteen awards, including Best Film, Best Actor (Alan Ceppos, Max Casella and Franck Raharinosy), Best Editing, and Best Cinematography. It certainly has horror elements to it, though these don't really affect the more grounded, if bizarre drama playing out for the unfortunate protagonist.
The prologue introduces us to happy couple, Leonard (Raharinosy) and his girlfriend Marie (Nora Arnezeder) in their New York apartment in lighter times, literally, as this is one of the only parts of the movie to be in full colour. Fast forward to the present and things are a lot different. Due to infidelity on Leonard's part the couple have split up, though awkwardly, with Leonard not able to afford to move out, he remains in the flat, sleeping on the couch. Due to this self inflicted trauma in his life, Leonard's job as a chef has began to suffer. With Marie away on business in Europe, she tells her ex that her once renowned photographer father Dennis (Alan Ceppos) is coming to stay, and that Leonard has until she returns to find a new place to live. Leonard begins to experience strange hallucinations, seeing once normal people as zombie like creatures, though whether this is down to the stress of his situation, or due to 'theta waves' that a local conspiracy states is causing citywide psychological issues it is hard to say.
This is a hard film to review, and I'm sure I won't do it justice. Basically, the horror elements here are slight, and they don't really have much bearing on the course of the events of the film, but I still felt they were essential at displaying Leonard's state of mind. As to whether random characters are literally turning into zombies or not, I like how that is never really explained. On the surface it does seem it is all occurring in the flawed protagonists mind, especially when turned characters later show up as perfectly fine, but there are many purposeful insert shots to show that the wi-fi boosters said to cause these anomalies are in the areas where Leonard encounters odd moments.
A lot of the vibe for this came to be what I termed grounded surrealism, which is also were the comedic elements come into the film. While not tagged as a comedy on IMDB, there are some amusing moments to be found throughout Leonard's series of humiliations that make up his journey. There is the part for instance where the man returns to his ex's apartment to find Dennis taking photos of a naked male model, to which Leonard immediately about turns and leaves. Later he again returns but this time the whole apartment is full of naked male models, with a priceless reaction from the flawed protagonist upon seeing this. Perhaps my favourite comedy moment was where he was speaking to a woman who had been attacked by her sister with a brick while they were building a house. Leonard questions whether they finished building to which she replies deadpan something along the lines of "no, we were a brick short". So silly, but also enjoyable.
With all the apparent zombified characters, fake realities in which Leonard finds himself back in colour experiencing what his life would have been if he hadn't cheated on Marie, characters he has met who inexplicably deny knowing him, and bizarre conversations (this is quite a dialogue heavy movie) it can occasionally be confusing what is real and what is not. By the end of the movie, outside of the fact that Leonard is somehow watching himself from an earlier scene in the movie on a TV, things seemed to have settled down into normality for him. There is no great character arc for the man, he ends the film just as self pitying and flawed as when he began, but at least appearing to be at the end of his surreal downfall. I did enjoy the double meaning of the title, both referring to the milky eyed look of the undead, Leonard's intense depression, and Marie's death of the love she once shared with the man.
I am sure there are lots of parts of this that I didn't understand, but I enjoyed my time with That Cold Dead Look in Your Eyes, weird but not too weird, and with some entertaining dialogue and some good performances, this was a lightly experimental movie that was a fun way to spend an hour and a half.
SCORE:
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