| Plot: Ever since the age of two, 20-year-old Mun has been blind. She finally receives a successful eye transplant only to find that everywhere she goes, she see ghosts and they can see her too. Mun now has to figure out what to do with The Sixth Sense, er, I mean The Eye. Review: Chinese horror movies are extremely rare, or it could just be that they don't feel like exporting them. Whatever the reason, they're in short supply, which is why I picked up this movie. At first glance, the boxart and story summary sound like a cheap Ringu rip-off, but it's not a rip-off, though, it was certainly influenced. Now while there's not much for me to hate in the movie, there's just not much for me to love either. Let me start off by saying that the Pang brothers tossed The Sixth Sense, Ringu, The Others, and Body Parts into a blender and mixed them all into a tiny protein shake called The Eye. That's quite a bit of movies, and there's some I left out because The Eye takes elements from a long list of movies. Firstly, this movie was hyped. It raked in lots of cash at the box office and got some strong reviews. Occasionally, yours truly gets sucked into the hype, and this was one of those times. So needless to say I went into this movie with some pretty high expectations, but I went out disappointed. The movie starts off pretty quickly with just a few minutes of Mun being blind. After that she gets her transplant and then she starts seeing the spooks. This definitely worked in its favor. Instead of waiting around "for the goods" (like waiting 20 minutes for a kill to happen in a Friday the 13th movie), the horror is thrown my way fast and it was much appreciated. Let me just say that on top of being cute, Angelica Lee does one helluva a job and carries this movie. Sure there are a few other characters, but it's Mun, Mun, Mun. The isolation of being blind and then having to stay in the hospital for weeks on end, they really played up that part. As her eyes are adjusting, we're not sure if what we're seeing are ghosts or just regular people walking by, not to mention she really doesn't know what anything looks like and has to start from square one. So needless to say, we were sympathizing with Mun from the very beginning. Lawrence Chou as Dr. Lo (the younger one) just grated on my nerves more than anything. You're telling me he's a young, good-looking, nice psychiatrist that believes Mun when she tells him she's seeing ghosts and isn't going to think she's crazy? Now you find me that guy in real life. Lawrence Chou plays the "nice guy" for all it's worth here. Chou looked like he'd be better off in some kind of B-movie drama than a horror flick. So after all the relatively good things I've said, why didn't I dig it? Simple, we've been down this road dozens of times before. Maybe the Pang brothers just decided to "play it safe," but there just isn't anything remotely new here. The Eye feels like a tour of other, better horror movies. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad movie, but you'd think that a movie that's a box office and critical hit would have at least some tricks up its sleeve, but it just didn't. The ghosts were done fairly well in the movie and I especially enjoyed the "Reaper" spectre coming to take the souls away, but since there was a ghost every two seconds, it got old fast. Mun can't even go to the toilet without seeing a ghost. Another one of my problems with the movie is that some of the ghosts' stories don't make much sense. A little kid kills himself over a report card? C'mon, that kid has to be ten-years-old at the very most, not exactly suicide material. Maybe if the film had been better I would've overlooked some of these minor details, but it wasn't. I see every corner coming a mile away. Eyes making you see ghosts? Find the donor of the eyes and put her soul to rest! Of course, putting her soul to rest didn't do squat, which makes the entire last part of the movie totally useless. The ending is also corny as well. She sees a huge explosion going to happen and nobody believes her...just like the original girl tried to warn everyone about a fire. Saw it comin'. Also, you're telling me that after a huge tanker spills that they're going to allow traffic through it? I don't care if it is Thailand, stop the fucking traffic flow! It's a bomb waiting to happen, why the fuck are you going to allow cars through it? The total run-of-the-mill feel of the movie magnified these little mistakes to me and made it hard to enjoy the movie. The Eye just doesn't go out of its way to be special or even memorable at that. It's an average ghost story at best. Then again, I was expecting something special, so I went a bit harder on this flick than I normally would've, so it's not bad for one viewing. However, anyone who would enjoy The Eye would not have to mind watching a rehash of many horror movies. Go into The Eye expecting the same things you've seen many, many times before in a ghost movie. |
| Rating:** |
| Review by Jim |
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