The Eye

Lack of Horror - In The Eye

It took not one, but two (!) directors and the feature presentation of nice specie Jessica Alba to deliver you the American variant of The Eye, A.K.A. Yet Another Tiresome Hollywood Remake of a Successful Asian Horror. The source is of Chinese origins this time around, and hit the market in 2002 by the title Gin gwai. Oriental frights are a treasury the dream factory seems quite keen to purchase horrific ideas from these days, doing whatever they want with the "payed-for" mental inventions that drive the eastern originators. As of today, these Hollywood workshops do little more than exploiting their hosts in an abrupt manner, depriving the Oriental Snake of it's nice, vicious venom teeth, seemingly having no clue that the most frightful circumstance concerning venom teeth is when they are STILL part of an operable serpent which is about to leash out.

Though revealing, interpreting these particular horror ideas via a different narrative culture language should pose as focal aspiration for these efforts, they still tend to exhibit an urge to sell out the bought thought as soon as possible, with but the least demanding modal resources realized to support, to fuel the key elements. The Eye is a perfect example: this movie may have bought it's soul from an Asian flick, but it makes one hell of a bad decision being so proud of it.

All is not too bad though as Jessica Alba gives an acceptable, steady performance in The Eye, no doubt. She personifies a blind young woman who lost her eyesight when she was five years old. She undergoes an eye transplant and regains her ability to see. Let us take a deep breath and ask cautiously: is this development surely for the better though? Naaah. You know it is not. Alba's character starts to hear, and eventually: see things. Shadows. Whispers. Groans. Then suddenly: Shadows! Whispers! Groans! When her new organs are to adept perfectly she can even see frightfully real beings whom others can not. The Eye's focal premise unravels in the early period of the buildup, giving you the recognition that the girl can see both the realm of the dead, yet even possesses an ability to visually inform her about imminent future events to take place, though all of these precognitions seem to concern grave dangers or inevitable deaths due to most unfortunate accidents.



- Ghosty! You're NOT leaking in there, right??

Interestingly, The Eye commits the biggest mistake by trying to widen it's field of operation. The original film recognized the meritorious presentation value of an inner, personal horror only the protagonist could relate to, as she had no doubt that everyone would consider her psyhotic if to tell about her perceptions. This gave the originator a nice extra appeal, a sensation of bitter conviction that the girl has to deal with this all on her own. Not Alba, of course: she breaks down hastily and spends a massive chunk of the buildup denying/accepting the inputs she experiences, telling all about them for her doctor, some very mediocre actor whom name I am not in the mood to dig up, sorry. Giving these fears away to consensus reality is the act The Eye commits narrative suicide by, yet presents you a nice testament how clueless a movie ends up as when it devours most of it's interesting horror charms voluntarily.

Amazingly enough, her doctor considers her as a basket case for a while - then Alba comes under a strong impression that she sees what the previous, original possessor of the eyes were seeing, and, in fact: sees still through these perfectly operable eyes. One must admit this realization process is quite nicely presented, as Alba sees a totally different person - the eye's proprietor - when she stares into the mirror. Suffice it to say that they team up to unravel the original possessor of the eyes, and they arrive to places permanently hunted by the unpleasant vibe of Latin American supernatural, even better: you will have a chance to see how thing were going to Rachel Ticotin during the previous 18 years, as 1990 was the latest occasion I seen her perform by as Arnold's female sidekick/rebel in Total Recall. My following sentence will be a superlow blow, yet I can not resist to record it. Looks like Ticotin had some Nicotine.

The Eye heavily relies on "boo-scares" of course, now the massive problem with this kind of effect creation these days is that you can smell them in the air prior they leash out at you. One can master a totally working method to resist pretty much all boo scares except the very good ones, I guess we should say: the ones we are looking for. The method to resist boo scares itself is easy. Pretend you are a phobiac. Let me elaborate. Everyone can fear when danger seems to be evident or imminent, the mind reacts to these signals by tuning your awareness receptors to a more intense domain of operation, a domain you are less likely to encounter unpleasant surprises on, as you are anticipating them already. A phobiac anticipates them all the time, must be pretty tough, no? Try it and see for yourself how superbly this method works: whenever you smell a boo-scare in the air - and you sorrowfully will, this is the first and biggest problem with recent boo-scares - anticipate them to kick in continuously. When they kick in, you will laugh your ass off of them instead of being scared. This is not good, not good. Boo-scares need definite development.

Definite development like The Eye could come up with. Main reason the onion chose to offer a review of this flick is a boo-scare, as there IS one particular scene that I found extremely powerful in this movie. I will not give that away, but will give you a hint: the "I told you I was gonna do it" scene with the strange male in female clothing in it is supercool. This particular boo-scare works masterfully, as it's structure allows your terror-registers to calm down, and attacks you by the time you truly not anticipate anything. That scene is a killer.

Ultimately The Eye is not an unwatchable piece of cloneware, though weights in amazingly shallow as a motion picture presentation. This remake would be a somewhat stable effort when searched and found at a DVD Rental's "B-films to Video Market" section, but definitely not a flick you end up satisfied with and convinced by in a theater environment.



If you enjoyed this here article, check out my comic: Planetseed
If you are to circulate magnificently pleasant vibrations: Buy me Beer