Eyes Wide Open

May 16, 2011
Gross's suspenseful second stand-alone thriller (after The Blue Zone) raises chills and strains credulity in almost equal measure. When successful surgeon Jay Erlich learns that his troubled 21-year-old nephew, Evan, the son of his older brother, Charlie, jumped to his death off a rock in California's Morro Bay, Jay travels to the coastal town of Grover Beach to help Charlie and Charlie's wife, Gabriella, "both bipolar, each with a history of drug and alcohol abuse." The distraught couple are wondering why a suicidal Evan was released from the county hospital shortly before the tragedy. Though Jay gets no assistance from Charlie and little from the detective on the case, he discovers some disturbing if obscure clues to other deaths past and present linked to Charlie's involvement in the 1970s with cult figure Russell Houvnanian, who went to prison with some of his commune followers for gruesome murders that echo the Charles Manson killings. Gross ratchets up the violence as Jay and his own family become targets for revenge.