Overall Rating
  Awesome: 18.82%
Worth A Look: 56.47%
Average: 18.82%
Pretty Bad: 4.71%
Total Crap: 1.18%
7 reviews, 43 user ratings
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| Eye, The |
by Greg Muskewitz
"Fright from second sight."
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Hong Kong horror flick from Danny and Oxide Pang, about a young woman blind since early childhood, who receives a cornea transplant to restore her vision.The catch is that she gets more than bargained for when she begins seeing phantoms — of course, not apparent at first during her adjustment. The first thought, which would be a premature judgment, is that this sounds all too reminiscent of The Sixth Sense and “I see dead people.” There never is much similarity between the two films beyond the shared visual observation of the dead, but even the reasoning behind that veers into two separate distinctions. In The Eye, the logic falls into the prescient eyes, or more specifically, the corneas that are implanted, and through some detective work thanks to her therapist (ridiculed by his doctor-relative for not discounting the occurrence of the occult), the correlation of nightmarish encounters and fatidic visions are traced back to the dead girl they came from. And her suicide has caused a chain of events that will continue to repeat themselves until closure has been gained. By being a product of Hong Kong, there is a certain expectation for taut action and a swift-moving plot, but the Pang brothers’ film isn’t from that school of moviemaking. Rather, it’s about pace, building suspense, giving or allowing room to be surprised along the way. In the true sense, it isn’t much of a horror film either, at least in the traditional style popular today, but it’s not without its veritable moments of frisson. The images, the sights, that our protagonist sees for the first time are selected and filmed to make their appearance similar to the viewer. It’s more that what she sees (the albino, her room shifting appearance, the shadow of a girl hanging from a noose) that have the effectiveness of being creepy rather than the shock value aspect of the story attempting to jump out and spook. The Pang brothers’ general restraint grants the film a cunning edge, and the film sends chills up the spine on several occasions, bolstered by a creepy soundtrack. (Examples of ironed-out malaise: the Braille credits that open the film; as the girl rides on the subway, she sees the reflection of the girl whose corneas she received.) And for a movie about vision, about regaining it after nearly a lifetime without, the Pang brothers are careful to construct their compositions, making use of the space on screen as though looking at the images through the eyes of someone newly able to see, and only playing with distortions when called for to reflect the girl’s adjustment to sight. It would be so easily to fall prey, but the brothers avoid resorting to gimmicks. With Lee Sin-je, Lawrence Chou, Chutcha Rujinanon, and Yut Lai So.[Worth-seeing.]
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=7213&reviewer=172
originally posted: 04/22/04 07:50:42
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OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2003 SXSW Film Festival. For more in the 2003 South By Southwest Film Festival series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2003 Seattle Film Festival. For more in the 2003 Seattle Film Festival series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2003 San Francisco Film Festival. For more in the 2003 San Francisco Film Festival series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2003 Santa Monica Film Festival. For more in the 2003 Santa Monica Film Festival series, click here.
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USA
06-Jun-2003 (R)
DVD: 21-Oct-2003
UK
N/A
Australia
03-Jun-2004 (MA)
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