The Eye
I speak a lot of trash about re-makes. Incidentally, a lot of movies now and forever will be re-makes and I just have to accept that. But what irks me most is the re-makes of previously great movies that people don’t think will work well into audiences now. Mainly older movies, or cult classic, many believe that an update will freshen up the material and bring in a younger fresher crowd only to find that people are honing back to the original anyway. But above all this, the most that studios seem to translate is foreign movies.
The trend, for a while anyway, seemed to be on Tartan Asian Extreme horror movies. After all, The Ring did pretty well with a whole new American face. But when a whole stream of hashed English speaking versions came out, the series died a big death and came back to haunt like an old grudge. The Eye being one of the worst of those movies as Jessica Alba takes the lead role.
But luckily, I am not here to talk to you about the original.
The Eye, 2002 Pang Brothers version, is Hong Kong-Singaporean movie. Blind violinist Mun is offered a new cornea transplant. When her sight returns, she is blown away by the new sights that she can see. However, the transplant becomes sour as she soon starts seeing ghostly apparitions and people who aren’t there. It soon transpires that her new eyes came from someone with a gift, and now that gift is haunting her too.
This all sounds like standard horror fares; raging spirits and possession galore. But The Eye manages to pack in the right amount of scares and story to be enjoyable. This slick piece of thrills and chills work on every level as we start to see the world through Mun’s eyes meaning we are second guessing ourselves at the figures in the corner, the blurs and the people in her life. It is brilliantly jumpy and that is what you want from a horror movie.
The Eye triumphs with the story too, what seems like a general ghost story actually is mixed with a pretty strong plot. With the terrifying and creepy action, the minute that the story of Mun’s donor starts to unravel in front of us, a deeper complex tale is put here. Some quite emotional moments and tensions surrounding being socially shunned and suicide as well as anger and forgiveness elevate The Eye above the usual stack of scary movies that are churned out so often.
The rest of The Eye series may have taken all this good feedback and squashed it with ridiculousness. And the remake was mixed with all the Hollywood yarn that makes it unbelievably stupid. But with the original, the first and indeed the most terrifying, The Eye is a classic movie to keep you up at night. It has chills and spills and keeps you on the edge of the seat until the very end. It’s not perfect, it can be drivel but it is definitely worth a watch.
The Eye teaching you that seeing is really believing
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