Julia's Eyes (Los ojos de Julia) 2010

Like the ‘giallo’ films of Dario Argento – brilliantly twisty Italian thrillers that revel in their lurid unlikeliness – the film shows Julia encountering all manner of creepy suspects (the squinty next-door neighbour with a hunchback, the janitor whose name means ‘Twilight’) in all manner of darkened corners. There’s a terrific subterranean chase lit only by mobile phone and camera flash, and a great scene in a changing room full of witchy blind women, although the way the film equates sightlessness with spookiness veers towards uncomfortably close to offensive.

Come the halfway mark, however, Morales can’t decide between Hitchcockian suspense and outright horror, and the film gives in to its heroine’s hysteria. For reasons best known to the scriptwriter, Rueda finds herself alone, blind and helpless in a house she suspects has claimed two lives already. It’s the set-up of a forgettable slasher, rather than something this sophisticated, and though it pays off with some suitably creepy moments, the film never quite manages to claw its credibility back, ending up less than the sum of its excellent parts. Hide