Pink Eye is Just What the Doctor Ordered

Posted by Paige MacGregor (paige@filmschoolrejects.com) on July 12, 2008

I’m a big fan of violent horror movies, so I tend to keep my eye out for overlooked gems of the genre that I can put in my Netflix queue and then watch with the lights out. While browsing the Internet recently, I came across an article touting a film titled Pink Eye. Normally, this title wouldn’t have caught my attention, but given the fact that I’ve had conjunctive eyetis (a.k.a. pink eye) twice since mid-May, I had to stop and take a brief look.

As it turns out, Pink Eye is a super-low-budget horror film that was picked up by Halo-8 Entertainment, a film production and distribution company formed in 2005 that specializes in “punk rock cinema, dangerous indie films and alt-culture videos.” Whatever that means. The film is being directed by James Tucker, who has been making the occasional under-the-radar horror flick since directing The Flesh Merchant in 1993.

According to some anonymous viewer on IMDb (cause we all know how reliable those are…):

Pink Eye is set in a small town in upstate New York, at a prison-like, dilapidated insane asylum where secret drug testing has gone inexplicably wrong. Patients are dying in sick and twisted ways and those who survive are becoming raging, homicidal lunatics. It’s only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose and the patients begin to crave freedom to take their vengeance out on the world outside. When one patient does escape deformed, angry and far beyond insane, he brings death and terror to an unsuspecting town and everyone in it.

I’m liking this so far. A small town, an insane asylum, drug testing that goes horribly wrong… it’s definitely got potential. And with a cast of nameless actors who look like they’ve all been doing some combination of the same low-budget horror films over the past few years, there’s also some serious potential for classically horrific horror-movie acting (you know the kind I mean– “Oh no, he’s coming at me with a knife but I’m going to trip over a branch and fall on the ground and then just watch as he keeps running towards me without making any effort to get up and save myself!” Yeah.).

For more info on Pink Eye, check out the film’s MySpace page, or read a review at Bloody Disgusting, or just watch the trailer below:

Read more articles by Paige MacGregor