Two out of
Five stars
Running time
99 mins
Apart from having bagged the Directing Brothers With The Coolest Names corner, directors Danny and Oxide Pang were behind last year's stylish hit-man drama Bangkok Dangerous.
For their follow-up, they've decided to move into horror and The Eye is the result. However, if at all possible, try to avoid looking at the poster, because it gives away one of the best moments of the film (and there aren't many).
Screaming Old Men
Angelica Lee plays Mun, a young Asian girl - blind since the age of two - who gets a cornea transplant and starts seeing more than she bargained for, such as ghostly figures screaming at her to get out of her chair and dead old men molesting her in lifts.
In order to stop her terrifying visions, she enlists the help of a friend and the two of them try to discover who the donor was.
The Eye isn't as enjoyable as Bangkok Dangerous, but there's enough here to suggest that the Pang Brothers have better movies ahead of them, perhaps when they've sorted out that tricky 'style / substance' ratio. At any rate, fans of Asian horror flicks won't be disappointed - particularly with the impressive opening sequence.
Deafeningly Screechy
The main problem with the film is that it moves ve-ry slow-ly and is
over-reliant on its deafeningly screechy soundtrack to accentuate the
shocks. However, the Pangs' impressive eye(s) for visuals compensate
somewhat and the extended final sequence makes up for a lot - even if it is slightly reminiscent of The Mothman Prophecies.
The acting by both leads is fine, but it doesn't help that the characters behave very stupidly at times, as this makes them hard to warm to.
Not Disturbing Enough!
In short, this is worth seeing if you liked Ring or Bangkok Dangerous, but it's not quite as scary or as disturbing as it could have been and the whole 'seeing dead people' thing has been handled much more comprehensively by films such as The Sixth Sense. In fact, The Eye is like The Sixth Sense, only cornea.