Interview: Laken Giles and Finn Bennett on ‘Eye for an Eye’
When Laken Giles first read the script for Eye for an Eye, a gothic horror film set in Florida, it felt like fate for the actress, who hails from Florida herself. “I was born and raised in Central Florida so it all felt really kismet filming my first movie set where I’m from,” she says. “The movie is like a gross love letter to the south.”
For Giles and her co-star Finn Bennett, the film’s setting, made up of decaying marshlands, heavy air and flickering lights, helped shape the texture of their performances in subtle but powerful ways. “I’d never worked in a climate like this before,” says Bennett. “It does something strange to the way you move and talk. It slows down your speech and movement, which was interesting. The marshland and the trees really give it a southern gothic feel that leaves you unsettled.”
Set in a town half-forgotten by time, Eye for an Eye follows Anna (Whitney Peak), a teen grieving the sudden death of her parents who relocates from New York to a small Florida town to live with the grandmother (S. Epatha Merkerson) she’s never met. Isolated and in unfamiliar surroundings, she falls in with local teens Shawn (Finn Bennett) and Julie (Laken Giles), but when she becomes a bystander to an unforgivable act of violence, she finds herself ensnared by Mr. Sandman, the twisted soul of a tormented child who haunts bullies’ dreams before feasting on their eyeballs when they finally wake.
Visually stylish with jumpscares galore, Eye for an Eye is a genuinely frightening horror film that borrows from the classics that came before it, such as A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th, to create a fun, thrilling viewing experience for audiences looking to scare themselves silly on a Friday night. However, thanks to a trio of powerful performances from Peak, Giles and Bennett, it is also so much more.
Above all else, Eye for an Eye is a horror film rooted in guilt, complicity and adolescent cruelty, incisively exploring the consequences of our actions and the price of staying silent in the face of something we know is wrong. Peak gives a phenomenal performance as Anna, the newcomer who also acts as a conduit for the audience of sorts. It’s through her eyes that we get to learn more about this town and its history, and it’s also through her eyes that we witness the fateful act that leads to the nightmare the trio find themselves ensnared in.
Giles’ Julie, on the other hand, is a rebellious teen who latches onto Anna, fascinated by the new girl in town who represents an entirely different world that she has never seen before. There’s a hunger in Julie that Giles plays with real affection, not just for chaos, but for connection. “Julie is so easy for me to play devil’s advocate for,” she says. “I think that at the end of the day Julie really wants to be a part of something and craves friendship. She finds that in Anna. She’s so babygirl to me.”
Giles worked with costume designer Whitney Anne Adams to plant subtle clues about Julie’s dynamic with Anna right into her outfits. “Julie wears a lot of Anna’s clothes pretty much the second after they meet,” she says. “Whitney [Anne Adams] and I pictured Julie immediately making herself at home at Anna’s and borrowing her clothes without asking, which I love.”
It’s the kind of small detail that says everything about who Julie is and how she moves through the world. It’s a dynamic that also extends to Julie’s relationship with Shawn, the town’s resident bad boy who’s still reeling from the loss of his dad and the mother he never knew. “Shawn and Julie also wear matching friendship bracelets which I think softened Shawn for me too,” Giles adds. “He’s messy and layered and not purely bad even though he does a really bad thing. Finn plays such a good asshole when he’s such a sweetie pie in real life.” Bennett, mostly known for his breakout role in the acclaimed fourth season of True Detective, brings real edge to the role, adding layers of nuance and complexity to the character beyond what’s on the page and in the dialogue, allowing audiences to empathize with Shawn in the process.
The real tragedy of the film is that Shawn and Julie aren’t bad people; they’re victims of a system that they unwittingly find themselves in with seemingly no way out. Does that excuse their actions? How far is too far? And does Anna’s silence make her complicit? That moral gray zone is baked into the script, which was written by Elisa Victoria and Michael Tully. And for first-time feature director Colin Tilley, it’s the perfect sandbox. Known for his music videos with Kendrick Lamar, Cardi B and Justin Bieber, Tilley approaches horror like a fever dream: bold, expressionistic, and meticulously constructed. “Colin’s an exceptional director,” says Bennett. “He’s full of energy and was so committed to the process. We could really trust all of the choices he made with costumes, shot lists, and set design.”
Giles, who makes her feature debut in Eye for an Eye (a fact audiences will be surprised to learn, considering how confident and bold her performance is), found the experience equally energizing. “I’m really lucky that my first feature was directed by Colin, and this was his first feature too so that felt special to me,” she says. “I feel like Finn, Whitney and I all work very differently and Colin instantly learned how to speak our individual actor languages to get the best performances from us.”
That bond between castmates extended well beyond their characters. “It was literally summer camp,” says Giles of her experience on set. “We filmed in Savannah, GA in the summer of 2023 and I went to school at the Savannah College of Art and Design so I really did feel like the hometown girl that got to show everyone around just like I do as Julie in the film. I think the casting team [Jenny Jue and Amanda Lenker- Doyle] really deserve their flowers on this one because the three of us instantly clicked without chemistry reads or anything.” It’s a sentiment Bennett more than agrees with. “The best part [of filming was bonding with the rest of the cast],” he gushes. “It was like a swamp themed summer camp.”
Peak, who plays the grieving teen at the film’s center, left a deep impression on both actors. “She was there all day every single day for about a month and a half in a place that I know felt really foreign to her,” says Giles. “Her days were long and hot and buggy and I really don’t ever remember her complaining once.”
“I hate to sound patronizing but I do think it’s important to mention how much of a leader Whitney was considering she was 20 when we shot this,” says Bennett. “So much of the feeling of a set comes from your director and leading actor, and they were both extraordinary.”
And in between the blood, sweat and tears, there were moments of levity too. “My favorite on set memory is probably when Whit and I did the lucid dreaming night shoot,” Giles recalls. “My stomach hurt from laughing so hard; we were delirious.” Off set, the trio would hit up restaurants to catch gigs by Giles’ best friend, a local singer. “We’d surround ourselves with the locals, just people-watching,” she says. “I think we all brought little tidbits they’d do back to set with us on Monday.”
Filmed two years ago, Eye for an Eye is finally making its way into the world, and for the cast, the wait has only made the release feel more surreal. “It was 2 years ago exactly next week,” says Giles. “So it feels like a long time coming. I think we’re all ready for it to be out in the world.”
EYE FOR AN EYE is now playing in select theaters and on demand.