JULIA’S EYES could be Spanish director Guillem Morales’ key to Hollywood. Produced by Guillermo del Toro and starring the gorgeous Belén Rueda (reuniting in those capacities from the highly regarded THE ORPHANAGE), the film has already been a hit in its home country and others, and arrives in the U.S. this week on VOD and in select theaters from IFC Films.

The movie is a journey into the physical and emotional darkness of a woman who must face her deepest fears. Julia (Rueda), connected from childhood with her twin Sarah (also played by Rueda), senses the moment in which her sister commits suicide—apparently because she has unsuccessfully undergone eye surgery and couldn’t bear her impending blindness. At the deceased woman’s home, Julia, who suffers from the same degenerative eye disease, starts to suspect that Sarah was murdered. As the world disappears around her, she’s sure there is someone in the shadows, shadowing her every step.

JULIA’S EYES, written by Morales and Oriol Paulo, plays with the fine line dividing the visible from the invisible, the real from the unreal, what we see from what we imagine. It does so by putting its heroine in extreme situations, making her rebuild a puzzle even though she hardly has any pieces. As Julia puts those pieces together, she becomes aware of something horrible going on around her, something that nobody else seems to realize and that will find her alone in the face of danger. The movie aims to place the spectator in Julia’s point of view; her eyes are those of the audience, and what Julia sees, they see. It is viewer complicity taken to its limits, an offer to play both a formal and an emotional game, designed to trap the audience and drag them along with her toward a darkness that hides something horrible.

Featuring stunning cinematography by Óscar Faura (who also shot THE MACHINIST and THE ABANDONED), and the first European film to use the Dolby Digital Surround 7.1 sound system, JULIA’S EYES relies heavily on a dark and oppressive atmosphere, building a sense of fear that homages classic Dario Argento and Mario Bava movies. Fango spoke with the Barcelona-born Morales at last October’s Sitges film festival.

FANGORIA: What was the genesis of the script?

GUILLEM MORALES: I had the image of a blindfolded woman: She has had eye surgery and has to wear her bandages for two solid weeks if she wants to regain her sight, but if she accidentally takes her blindfold off, the operation will be ruined. Somehow I thought that the woman, even with her blindfold on, would start seeing things clearer than ever. That was all I knew at the time. It was just an idea. But I knew there was a good story to tell behind it. In the history of cinema, you can see several films featuring blind women, as Richard Fleischer’s classic SEE NO EVIL. But very few films present a character who is going blind, a woman who feels she is doomed to a world of darkness and there is nothing she can do about it.

But it’s also a version of THE INVISIBLE MAN. In fact, when we were in LA selling the movie, we’d be asked, “What is JULIA’S EYES about?” And we’d say, “It’s a blind woman vs. the Invisible Man!” People were staring at us. “What? What? How is that possible?”

FANG: You seem very fascinated by that idea.

MORALES: Yes, I think it’s an intriguing concept to stretch in a movie. JULIA’S EYES is not a film about a blind woman. It’s a film about a woman who is going blind. It describes her evolution from a psychological, emotional and horrific point of view. Losing something is always terrible. Losing things you have or you have obtained, sometimes they are just material things, but sometimes they are people or feelings. Losing something always implies a sort of mourning, and mourning is never pleasant. But in turn, losing something always means winning something else. And that’s where we needed to stop. Because there is nothing sad or terrible there. Going blind is not pleasant, but it does not mean the world ends there and then. It means a transformation. And a transformation is a painful process, but also an incredibly positive one if you take it like it is, an evolution. Going blind is not as important as our attitude toward the change itself, and that is Julia’s journey.

This idea let me play with the eyes of the audience. Sometimes things are quite obvious and sometimes they are not, and that’s exactly where one of the most fascinating parts stems from: making the audience suffer a certain degree of blindness with Julia. And not through subjective shots from Julia’s character, but through a visual commitment, an unspoken agreement with the audience that I use from the very beginning of the story, in order to “blind the viewer” without having to resort to a black screen. I was obsessed with the idea of somehow making them share Julia’s emotional experience, and I believe we got away with it. I can assure you that, at some point during the film, the spectator goes blind in a cinematic way.

FANG: How did Guillermo del Toro got involved in the project?

MORALES: Guillermo had seen my first film, THE UNINVITED GUEST, and he thought it was great. Then someone gave him the screenplay of JULIA’S EYES, he read it and wanted to talk with me, so I had a meeting in London with him and the producers. Universal Pictures saw this as an excellent opportunity to start their first production in Spain, and from that moment on Guillermo was tied to the project.

FANG: What were the differences between filming JULIA’S EYES and THE UNINVITED GUEST?

MORALES: Well, the first thing was that I had more money—the budget was 5 million euros—and more time. I was much more relaxed, and therefore able to better manage the tension. Since Guillermo was involved since the beginning, when there was just the screenplay, he helped me keep the pressure down. He’s a great guy, always there with you, giving plenty of advice, but he lets you work; he doesn’t try to impose his ideas.

FANG: How was it working with Belén Rueda as your lead?

MORALES: Belén immersed herself so deep in her role that she almost gave me and the rest of the troupe heart attacks! During the film, there is a moment in which someone threatens her by getting the point of a knife up to her eye, very close to her pupil. It was a big close-up and we could not use a fake knife, because the lens was so close that you would have noticed it. It had to be a real, sharp knife.

Of course, I had thought about using a trick, filming Belén’s eyes and the cutting edge of the knife, then joining them digitally to achieve the chilling final effect. But when the moment came, Belén and the actor with the knife had been rehearsing the scene and had become so confident in their self-control that they suggested doing it for real, with a sharp knife and no tricks. I firmly refused. Digital integration would work; such risks were unnecessary. But they insisted: “Let us try, Guillem, it’s all under control, don’t worry,” they said. They looked so convinced that I finally gave in. I said, “All right, but just once, and be extremely careful.” I just thought they’d use their common sense in the end, that they were only playing and that it would not work. When we said “Action,” the knife got so close to Belén’s eye that everyone’s blood ran cold. After we cut, we were all silent and horrified. All except the actors, who walked over to the screen to see how it looked. They watched the take and went pale. It’s a gorgeous shot, but I had nightmares for a whole week, thinking what would have happened if Belén had sneezed in that moment!

FANG: How would you describe your movie?

MORALES: I’d say this is mainly a thriller, with same horror elements, as the killings are very gory. I’d say that it’s as if a Hitchcock thriller met an Italian giallo. I am a defender of the genre. The thriller encompasses other genres: drama, love story, you can include at the same time social commentary. A thriller allows you to amplify emotions; you can be more melodramatic, and if you’ve got a good story and you build it through a thriller, you get a much better result. Guillermo says it is the kind of giallo created in the ’60s and ’70s by Mario Bava and Dario Argento. I think it’s the first feminist giallo, as usually this genre was very macho, and even though the protagonist is going blind, I wanted her to look sexy, with high heels and skirt; I mean, Belén is naturally sexy and has an incredible energy. At one point she had to chase someone along a corridor, and she was running so fast that she almost bumped into the camera, so I had to ask her, “Please, can you slow down?”

FANG: Which influences have you had as a filmmaker?

MORALES: I love Bava and Argento, I love Hitchcock and PSYCHO. We all grew up with these movies. Hitchcock used to create a very psychological kind of cinema, and it’s the same language you see in JULIA’S EYES. I like it because it’s classic cinema. I love the camerawork of Roman Polanski also, and the movies of Nicolas Roeg. In terms of narrative, he’s one of my favorite directors, but I love THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN as well. That’s one of the most interesting movies; it’s incredible.

FANG: The movie has some moments of authentic terror.

MORALES: It’s a very strong psychological fear. To me, real horror is just one step away from drama. A zombie, a monster or a ghost are fine, but they’re creatures of fantasy. I love the fantastic—it’s a genre I know very well—but I prefer to use a more psychological type of terror, much more aggressive. You can’t find a way out; it’s more realistic.

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MOVIES/TV - Fearful Features