Starring: Angelica Lee, Lawrence Chou, Chutcha Rujinanon, Yut Lai So Script: Jo Jo Yuet-chun Hui & Oxide Pang Chun Original Title: Jian gui Running Time: 1:50 Country: Hong Kong, Thailand Year: 2003 Official Site: The Eye
For their second time behind the camera, the Pang brothers (Bangkok Dangerous) have chosen to cultivate horror, a resolutely en vogue genre in contemporary Asian cinema. The Eye recalls the hours of terror of a blind young woman, Mun (Angelica Lee) who, after recovering her sight thanks to a successful transplant, sees her world turned upside down by the presence of ghosts.
If one finds in The Eye some of the two filmmakers' favorite themes, in this case the handicap of a sense and the paranormal phenomenon which were already at the center of Bangkok Dangerous, it is quickly understood that the cinematographic voyage offered by the Pang brothers strongly tastes of déjà-vu.
Based on a premise outlined at the dawn of Cinema with Vampyr, then mystified by the glorious cult B-movie, Carnival of Souls, before M. Night Shyamalan "reinvented" the concept for popular posterity with The Sixth Sense, The Eye once again plays the "I see dead people" trick. With no other aspiration than to give us some good thrills — partly successful — the Pang brothers recite the clichés of the genre with the quest, in the background, to bring a tortured soul to rest. However, the inspiration — or rather its lack thereof — goes beyond, as one finds the use of a corridor and elevator as places of terror, a process already used in Dark Water by the overrated Nakata Hideo, while the conclusion of the film is reminiscent of The Mothman Prophecies.
More disappointing, the concept of a handicap, like blindness, is not exploited enough while the criticism of a village's ancestral beliefs contradicts the very nature of a film anchored in the fantastic.
As usual Oxide & Danny Pang use a stylized pallet, here with the use of blurring to symbolize parapsychological incarnations. Their cinema is undoubtedly equipped with a light poetic dimension and death, a dark and rangy character, recalls a Bergmanesque representation (The Seventh Seal).
Despite an engaging main character (Mun) and some spectacular feats, The Eye never manages to pull out from underneath its B-movie yoke, finely packaged but without ambition. One waits for the Pang brothers to find a script which can confirm their talent, beyond a simple retelling.
The Eye movie review
