The Eye (2002) (AKA Jain gui)
Imagine "The
Sixth Sense" meets "Body Parts" meets Hong Kong
Horror. Now imagine that it sucks. Okay. You've got
a pretty good idea what to expect from "The Eye."
Yes, this is one of those films
where a young blind woman gets a cornea transplant
but when she gains her sight she sees things that
are odd and mysterious. Yep. She sees dead people.
And before you can say "Haley Joel Osment" the film
denigrates into some of the most typical, standard
and annoying storytelling one has ever had to endure.
Gee, I wonder if you would be surprised if you find
out that the now deceased donor of the cornea saw
dead people too?
Remember how in "The Sixth Sense"
we found out Osment's Cole could see dead people but
the film remained tense and engrossing. No such luck
here. We find out protagonist Mun can see dead people
and then for nearly an hour we have to watch her squeak,
squeal, eek, shiver and breath heavy every time a
corpse comes around. It gets old fast. Lee Sin- je
(AKA Angelica Lee) overacts like mad here. Hell, she
doesn't just overact, she over-breathes.
And the plot is downright stupid.
Lee's Mun has surgery to replace her corneas after
being blind nearly all her life. When the doctors
unwrap her bandages, they do so in the brightest fucking
room you've ever seen. It's ridiculous. Then, while
Mun is supposedly still recovering and still barely
able to see, a small child takes her picture with
A CAMERA WITH A FLASH BULB. Yet she doesn't flinch.
Sure, the picture will become important later in the
plot but the fact that the blinding flashbulb doesn't
hurt her incredibly sensitive eyes is just stupid
beyond belief. These two incidents take place in the
first 10 minutes of "The Eye" so after that it's really
hard to take any of it seriously.
The film might be a total waste
of time if Mun didn't start seeing one of the cutest
young doctors to be found in Hong Kong. Apparently
the Chinese really are much smarter than us because
their psychoanalysts are only 15 years old. I don't
know who this actor is and I don't know how old he
is but he looks far too young to be believed as a
doctor. And when he falls in love with Mun after almost
zero interaction with her, it all gets just too silly
to believe.
The end of the movie is one of the
most ridiculous and poorly undertaken special effects
scenes ever to be filmed. An endless montage of burned
mannequins supposedly representing people who have
been through an explosion is almost laughable. And
the "ironic" ending is nothing short of, let me use
this word one more time please, stupid.
"The Eye" has been optioned by Tom
Cruise presumably to be made into an English film.
I would guess the powers-that-be are hoping that it
will follow in the footsteps of "The Ring (based on
the Hong Kong film "Ringu") and become a big hit.
It will need a helluva director and a helluva rewrite
for that to happen.
By the end of the film I wished
I was blind too...
Note:
In Cantonese, Mandarin and Thai
with subtitles and sparse English.
Written and directed by brothers
Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang whom the credits lists
them as "Pang Brothers."
The film has a cool introduction
where it appears the film melts in the projector.
Filmed in Hong Kong and Thailand.
Scheduled to hit American arthouses
in June of 2003.
My favorite line from "Body Parts"
(a film where a guy gets an arm transplant from a
murderer and then begins killing people): "This fucking
arm's killing me!" I was really disappointed that
Mun didn't gouge her eyes out at the end of the film.
Viewed in Austin in March 2003
at the SXSW Film Festival
