When it comes to movies and TV shows that take place in supernatural and even fantastical settings, viewers want to feel like they’ve been transported to the worlds they’re being presented with—and that’s what makes costume design so crucial.
The right hair, clothes, and accessories can help anchor characters in a particular context, detail their personalities, and even hint at subtle plot points. However, great costume design can be challenging to achieve. Even the tiniest detail done wrong—like a character wearing shoes that
shouldn’t have been available during the time period they were placed in—can break viewer immersion.
This is even more apparent when you look at the use of costume contact lenses in film and TV. These are very similar to the colored contacts you can buy online. Sold on Contacts Direct, brands like Air Optix® and Dailies® come in different opacities and hues ranging from blue and green to gray and honey, allowing them to slightly or completely alter the appearance of your eyes. However, costume or special effects contacts take that even further. They come in more exotic colors—like yellow, red, black, and white—and even different pupil shapes, making an actor’s eyes look reptilian, feline, or even alien.
When used right, costume lenses can cement a character’s appearance, making even those hailing from non-human species look natural and further immersing viewers into a particular world’s setting and lore. When used incorrectly, however, they can make costume design look awkward,
breaking that immersion altogether. These movies and TV shows prove just that.
Game of Thrones
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Though it decidedly ended its eight-season run on a sour note, this award-winning fantasy drama series is still fondly remembered for its complex world-building and intersecting storylines. Game of Thrones’ lore was further enhanced by its use of contact lenses, especially for main characters
like Arya Stark. The youngest daughter of the North’s ruling family ended up working for the Many-Faced God under the mentorship of the Faceless Man, which meant she had to detach herself from her old identity.
After contradicting that directive and making a move driven by personal motivations, the Faceless Man punished Arya by striking her blind—and to complete the effect, actress Maisie Williams was required to wear white contacts. These were extremely thick at over 16 millimeters and were even hand-painted to give the lenses a murky appearance. They were also completely opaque, meaning Williams really couldn’t see on set. The actress admitted that the contacts were painful to wear, but definitely delivered the desired effect, making the consequences in the show appear much more realistic.
The Exorcist 
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If there’s one movie to be lauded for its exemplary use of costume contact lenses, it’s The Exorcist. Here, the costume design for the bedridden Regan McNeil—arguably the blueprint for creepy kids in the plenty of horror movies that came after—is already considered to be among the best in the genre. Her nightgown alone becomes increasingly filthy over the course of the film, marking her transition from a sweet little girl to something evil. That transformation is further signaled by the costume department’s use of contacts.
The Exorcist was produced without any special effects, making contact lenses crucial for heightening the film’s atmosphere. Their design was comprised of jagged yellow irises with a green tint and a black outer ring, helping them give off a demonic appearance. In an interview for the Directors Guild of America, director William Friedkin added that he took additional steps to highlight actress Linda Blair’s contact lenses in multiple scenes. “We used just one soft light across her face so only a thin strip of light caught her eyes in the dark bedroom,” he explained. The result? Linda’s contacts reflected the light perfectly, making her eyes “gleam in a beastly fashion” —and they helped make the film so scary that many moviegoers were reported to faint or cry in the theater. Talk about true viewer immersion!
The Twilight movies 
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Coming down from the effective use of contact lenses in The Exorcist takes us to the Twilight movies. This places viewers in a world where vampires that sparkle in the sun live in cold and rainy places like Forks, Washington—a setting so compelling that our TV talking points from 2024 note that Lionsgate is working on an animated version of the four-part series. A major part of the lore adapted from Stephenie Meyer’s books states that vampires can be differentiated by the color of their eyes. Those who feed on humans have rich burgundy eyes, while “vegetarian” types who only consume animal blood have amber or gold ones.
The Twilight crew fully leveraged costume contacts to establish those differences, with the main characters in the Cullen family sporting golden eyes and the antagonist Volturi family donning wine-colored lenses. This worked for the first film—but by its sequel, New Moon, it’s clear that the costume department switched the Cullens’ contacts out for vibrant yellow lenses that looked completely unnatural on the cast.
Actor Michael Sheen, who played the Volturi leader Aro, added that the burgundy lenses were also thick, uncomfortable to wear, and made it hard to see and perform on set. Unlike in Game of Thrones, however, these drawbacks were unnecessary due to the lenses’ intended purpose of changing eye color instead of portraying blindness. That’s broken the immersion for many Twilight viewers, with fans on Reddit and other online forums
confirming that the use of contacts in the series frequently took them out of the story.
