Eye for an Eye

Anna Reeves arrives at May Roberts’s home in Florida after her parents’ death, and there she meets Patti, May’s sister. Settling in, Anna wanders into the woods behind the house and encounters Shawn and Julie Cross, two teenagers who invite her to share a beer. On the way back, she discovers a large, ancient tree bearing her grandmother’s name carved into the bark, a sign that something dark and old may be at work.

The following day, Patti explains that May used to be a talented but malicious cheerleader, and she recounts the local legend of Sandman, a figure who punishes evildoers by haunting their dreams. As the trio grows closer, Anna, Shawn, and Julie end up on a bridge where Shawn spots Conner(/actor/carson-minniear), a child who is harassed and pushed off the railing, breaking his arm. He is rushed to the hospital, and Shawn threatens him to keep quiet, deepening Anna’s unease. She escorts him home, then returns to her room and cries herself to sleep.

Conner visits Patti, who urges him to stand up for himself. When he confides that he feels powerless, she advises him to carve the names of his bullies into the old tree so Sandman will punish them. That night, Conner carves the names Shawn, Julie, and Anna into the bark, binding their fates to the forest’s curse. Anna begins to suffer nightmares, reliving the moment of her parents’ death and seeing herself drowning in a coffin, a chilling reminder of the dream-haunting entity.

The next day, she encounters Conner in a local shop. She apologizes and buys him roller blades, but he remains distant. As days pass, Shawn, Julie, and Anna are plagued by nightmares, and Anna returns to the tree to confirm the names etched into the bark, realizing that something supernatural is at work. In a vivid dream, she hears the story of Vincent, a blind boy with glass eyes who was bullied to death in the forest, a tale that helps explain the rise of Sandman.

Tensions erupt when Anna has an altercation with Shawn, then shows him and Julie the tree. Left on their own, the trio is horrified as Sandman tears out Shawn’s eyes, a skeletal, eyeless figure covered in roots. Shawn staggers to escape, but collides with a branch and seemingly dies. The friends attempt to lucid dream, but fall into another nightmare. The next morning, Julie drowns in the bathtub after Sandman tears out one of her eyes.

Back at the house, May drugs and ties Anna to her bed, intent on removing Anna’s eyes to take them for herself. Anna fights back, escaping and driving a hammer into her own arm—the same injury Conner once inflicted—while May stabs Patti in the eye during a struggle that leaves both women unconscious. In a dreamlike sequence, Anna finds two glass eyes on the floor in Sandman’s lair and hands them over to him, who spares her. She wakes up in her own bed with her eyes intact, the nightmare finally concluded but the memory of the forest’s curse lingering.