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Eye, The
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| Year: |
2002
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Director: |
Oxide Pang Chun, Danny Pang
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| Stars: |
Angelica Lee, Lawrence Chou, Chutcha Rujinanon, Candy Lo, Yut Lai So, Yin Ping Ko, Pierre Png
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| Genre: |
Horror |
| Rating: |
  7 (from 5 votes) |
| Review: |
Mun (Angelica Lee) is a young violinist, blind since birth, who has an operation to give her sight. She finds life after her cornea transplant difficult to get used to, especially as she has started to suffer disturbing dreams, and worse, is seeing people who no one else is aware of - ghosts.
Creepy and low key for the most part, this supernatural chiller was written by directors the Pang Brothers. Eyes have often been a source for squeamish thrills in horror movies, but this concentrates less on the squishy side of those organs, and more on the "can you trust what you are seeing?" angle. By putting a spin in the old Hands of Orlac tale of a transplant recipient inheriting the spirit of their donor, The Eye manages an effectively eerie mood.
Part of this spin is that, instead of a heroine who is threatened by seeing less, Mun becomes more vulnerable the more she sees. When Mun investigates noises in the hospital corridor soon after her operation, she meets the apparently confused old woman in the hospital bed opposite hers - we're not surprised when it turns out the old woman has died that very night.
And we're not really surprised when Mun continues to see ghosts, both solid-looking and ethereal, wandering through the streets or even in the halls of her apartment block. In fact, the Eye gets pretty repetitive after a while, with its wishy-washy heroine being spooked at every turn. Instances of her trying to cope with her newly acquired sight, such as learning to write, seeing an albino man for the first time, or being dropped from her blind muscians group, become increasingly irrelevant when Mun and her psychotherapist boyfriend hunt down the family of the donor, who, naturally, is revealed to be a troubled soul.
Using special effects, snappy editing and camera trickery, the Pang Brothers create a few good scare scenes with some unnerving detail - for example, the woman with the baby and her extra long-tongue, or the excellent bit in the world's slowest lift, featuring a man with a caved-in head. But by the cruel ending, you might wonder what the point was - Mun hardly saved anyone, after all, and is back where she started. That problem aside, The Eye's pervasive atmosphere of the paranormal saves it. The score is by Orange Music.
Aka: Jian Gui
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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