There’s something reliably creepy about small-town horror. Maybe it’s the generational myth told by an elder with twisted fingers about that thing in the woods or the way quiet alleys and lamplit cul-de-sacs seem to echo loudly when something goes wrong. From IT and The Fog to Jeepers Creepers and Salem’s Lot, horror has long operated with the understanding that isolated communities hold the darkest secrets. Add an ocular obsession from a spectral dream stalker to the mix, and you’ve got a recipe for visceral terror primed to make viewers twist and shout. Eye for an Eye, the feature debut from music video ace Colin Tilley, attempts to blend these juicy elements into something fresh.  Like many ambitiously eerie exercises, it struggles to find its footing trying to juggle moody aesthetics with muddled storytelling.

Anna (Whitney Peak, Hocus Pocus 2), grieving the sudden loss of her parents, gets relocated from Manhattan to a mossy patch of nowhere in Florida to live with her estranged grandmother May (S. Epatha Merkerson, Lincoln). Blind and with an air of mystery, May lives alone in a house tucked away from prying eyes. She’s warm toward her granddaughter, offering her some deer jerky upon arrival, but doesn’t seem interested in getting to know her. Anna’s relative isolation makes her desperate for connection and easy prey for two local teen troublemakers, Shawn (Finn Bennett, A Banquet) and his girlfriend, Julie (Laken Giles).

With little to do in the small town, Anna’s new friends offer her a lifeline.  However, it only pulls her into their spirit of cruelty. Their idea of fun involves tormenting the vulnerable, and when an unkind prank crosses that invisible line into “too far,” Anna unwittingly becomes a witness to violence. This act will have repercussions, though, because the trio will have their names written on the oldest tree in the forest, the one that is said to hold the spirit of Mr. Sandman, a vengeful spirit born from childhood trauma who stalks bullies through their dreams before claiming their eyes as midnight snacks. After learning too late about the legend from her great aunt Patti (Golda Rosheuvel, Dune: Part One), Anna must make amends for whatever is after her. Something ancient. Something hungry.

The premise, admittedly, has some snap to it, and at times, so does the film. Tilley has directed some visually impressive music videos for the likes of Kendrick Lamar and Nicki Minaj and he brings the same adroit eye to creepy dream sequences that turn nightmarish. Practical effects and atmospheric lighting create a handful of genuinely unsettling moments. However, Robert Leitzell’s workmanlike cinematography begins to feel overly cautious when bolder choices might have enhanced the supernatural elements. We’re in Florida, after all. Eye for an Eye should have been sweatier, swampier, and much stranger.

Tilley struggles the most during lengthy stretches of dialogue-heavy exposition.  This leaves his actors to awkwardly relay clunky information downloads without much guidance from their director. The film’s pacing suffers accordingly, particularly in a bloated first half that could have been trimmed significantly.

On a positive note, Tilley cast the film well, with Peak carrying much of the narrative weight with admirable conviction. Anna is restless in her new environment but more observant of her surroundings than most horror protagonists could ever hope to be. That curiosity about the town and its lore makes us care about it, too. Her eventual confusion with her family’s legacy mirrors our own as the script loses focus, but she navigates these internal shifts with a natural honesty. When the material demands vulnerability, she delivers; when it calls for focused grit, she’s ready to go. It’s a performance that suggests her recent casting in 2026’s The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is something to look forward to.

Celebrated stage and screen star Merkerson molds what could have been a throwaway grandmother role into something to pay attention to. Whether she’s staring back at you through her oversized sunglasses or revealing the scarred eye sockets that hint at her past encounters with Mr. Sandman, she is always fully enmeshed with the mood and one with her fellow actors. Rosheuvel works a bit of a miracle as the gossipy Patti, finding a sly blend of horror and humor in her sharp-tongued role that rides the edge of camp. Sadly, she vanishes for large portions of the runtime, appearing only to drop a few nuggets of superstition here and there.

Unfortunately, Bennett and Giles come across as cartoonish placeholder antagonists rather than fully formed characters. Their bad behavior isn’t layered, nor does it leave you wondering where it originates from. It’s just loud and obnoxiously obvious, resulting in performances that telegraph their fates from their opening introductions. Horror needs stakes, and it’s hard to care when the targets are flat stereotypes.

What we have is a supernatural revenge tale that borrows liberally from the dog-eared pages of Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street playbook. But without the five-fingered-razor-sharp wit or memorable one-liners, this silent specter operates more like a methodical executioner than a charismatic killer. The human-ish creature—part CGI, part practical, part silly—never becomes someone you’re rooting for over the ones trying to survive. I’m not sure if this ghoul with a fondness for eyeballs would work, even if the film committed fully to its somber tone. Perhaps that’s because Tilley and co-writers Elisa Victoria (adapting her graphic novel “Mr. Sandman”) and Michael Tully aren’t sure if they are making a suspense thriller or a straightforward supernatural slasher.

A major frustration is that, although the film introduces themes of bullying, trauma, and cyclical violence, it offers little insight beyond surface-level observations. Even then, they are only of use to the screenplay when they fit into the narrative. You can sense the graphic novel roots beneath the surface as it asks big questions I’d love a horror movie to tackle. What makes someone deserve punishment? Can a community manufacture its monsters? But it never digs deep. Heated conversations about accountability and consequences dominate our current social discourse. Revenge fantasies should resonate at this particular point in history.  Instead, we’re asked to settle for the familiar, down to the predictable jump scares.

Eye for an Eye feels like a competent rough draft rather than a finished statement. Tilley has the eye (pun intended) for creative visuals, but nothing feels particularly distinctive or memorable. There’s enough visual flair to show promise as a filmmaker. But to fully realize his potential, Tilley needs stronger material and more experience with narrative structure. Horror completists will find moments worth appreciating, but it’s a movie that works in isolated fragments rather than a cohesive whole. It won’t put you to sleep, but it won’t haunt your nightmares either.