Just when you thought RHI Entertainments and Genius Products ran out of ideas for killer animal movies, they spring upon us Eye of the Beast, the fifth film in the Maneater series. And in case you were wondering, yes this film is yet another Sci-fi channel original movie.

Eye of the Beast stars James Van Der Beek (Dawson’s Creek) as a scientist who is investigating reports of a giant squid attacking fishermen from a small fishing community in the North Atlantic. People have gone missing and fear has set about the small town as people fear it might come ashore and attack. Now a group of brave adventures and fishermen set out to kill the beast before it kills anyone else.

Honestly folks the movie is so low budget that the plot is very straight forward in it’s storytelling. The script is simple and easy so it’s not really hard to tell what’s going on. Unfortunately however, because it’s so straight forward it lacks in character development, and action. The movie is more of a talkie with simple yet effective dialogue.

The acting in Eye of the Beast is nothing special, but it’s not that bad either. James Van Der Beek gave a somewhat decent performance, but with a script as simple as this one, anyone could of done a good job in the role. The production value was nothing special, although the locations used did give the film a feel of a small fishing town. The problem with this film is that there is very little special effect and we never really see the beast all. The most we really get is a large piece of tentacle with a little blood on it that some of the fishermen bring back to their local watering hole.

Overall, Eye of the Beast is a very simple film that was shot on a very small budget. Some might say it’s a B-movie quality at best, but I disagree as the sets and location did look better than your normal B-movie. What Eye of the Beast’s downfall is that it has no great effects sequences or action in it, and that just makes for a boring monster movie.

– Horror Bob