By Kofi Outlaw
THE EYE is the latest Japanese horror film given a glossy American makeover. It’s not the best of the bunch (THE RING), it’s not the worst of the bunch (ONE MISSED CALL), but is it worth a ten dollar movie ticket? I’ll let you be the judge.
Sydney Wells (Jessica Alba, looking pretty as ever,) is a talented violinist who has been blind since she was five. Though she’s used to a life without sight, Sydney longs to experience the world like other people and signs up for procedure called a “double cornea lift” which will hopefully restore her sight.
The operation goes well, though at first Sydney can only make out blurred images, as her eyes slowly adjust to the visual world. The trouble starts her first night after the operation, when Sydney notices her elderly roommate at the hospital wandering the hallway. When Sydney tries to coax the old woman back into bed, a mysterious shadow-figure manifests and snatches the old woman away. When Sydney wakes in the morning, a nurse informs her that the old woman died in her sleep.
In the weeks after her procedure, the ghostly sightings start to occur with increasing frequency. Moreover, Sydney has prophetic dreams of terrible experiences (people burning to death in a raging fire,) which are not her own. The stress leads her to Dr. Paul Faulkner (Alessandro Nivola), who specializes in helping cornea transplant recipients adjust to a sight-based world. Of course Paul thinks that Sydney is experiencing a stress disorder brought on by the sensory overload from her recovered sight. However Sydney believes that the dead girl’s eyes she’s inherited contain a terrible power, and until she sets things right with the eyes’ original owner, the terrible visions won’t stop. After a lot of begging and pleading, Paul reluctantly agrees to take Sydney to Mexico, to visit her donor’s home.
In Mexico Sydney uncovers the tragic circumstances of the donor girl’s death, and makes peace with the ghost. Paul and Syd head for home, thinking all is well, until, (in J-horror fashion,) one last, ghastly surprise is sprung on them.
Unlike so many recent J-horror imports, THE EYE is a film that is pretty polished and very tightly structured. The story unfolds at a good pace, each scene is competently composed and relevant, every thread of storyline serves a distinct and discernable purpose, and the “surprise” at the end is well earned and fits logically with the story that preceded it.
That all said, my only issue with THE EYE is that it’s a small firecracker rather than a stick of dynamite. There are some pretty good scares, but those are basically limited to the usual, ghost-jumping-out-from-the-peripheral, sort of tricks. The fact that any time Sydney has her eyes open, she’ll potentially see something horrifying, keeps the atmosphere of the film pretty unsettling for the first forty-five minutes—but as Sydney gets used to her affliction, so do we, and “the horror” quickly becomes more routine than scary. And unlike THE RING, the “surprise” ending of THE EYE is designed to be uplifting, rather than terrifying, and while it’s cool how that last twist ties together little hints sprinkled throughout the film, for my money, nothing beats a great eleventh-hour scare.
For her part, Jessica Alba puts in a full and genuine performance, and in my opinion does a much better job than her Japanese counterpart did; I tried to watch the original EYE some years ago, and it was so bland and boring, I yanked it after just thirty minutes. Parker Posey’s presence in this film is a mystery; the indie queen plays Sydney’s sister in a couple of scenes, but isn’t handed much to work with. Nivola is ok as Dr. Paul, but after seeing his depth in other work like the TNT miniseries THE COMPANY, I know he’s only going half-speed here.
Still, co-directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud do a better job bringing their second-hand import to the screen then they will probably get credit for. But then, those are the breaks when you don’t have the option of originality.
Should you go see THE EYE? Well, I was in the theater with a lot of teenage kids, and they belted out some pretty good screams at key moments. And, if you’re guy (or an admiring girl,) it’s a never a bad thing to have the lovely Ms. Alba be the center of the camera’s attention at all times. (All I’m going to say is: profile shower shot.) But if you don’t want to pay theater prices to see a less-exciting version of THE RING, then don’t. However definitely give the film a whirl when it’s released on DVD. For less than five bucks, THE EYE is definitely worth seeing.