The Eye (2002)
Director: Pang Brothers
Starring: Angelica Lee, Lawrence Chou, Candy Lo, Edmund Chen
Primary genre: Supernatural
Secondary genre: Horror
The Pang Brothers showed promising visual flair in their directorial debut Bangkok Dangerous (1999), a Thai actioner shot on location. Who would have thought, though, their next film would be set within an entirely different genre: horror. The Eye busted onto the cinematic scene just when Asian movies such as Cure (1997), Ringu (1998), Ju-On (2000), Pulse (2001), and Dark Water (2002) were becoming quite popular (compelling Hollywood to do their own series of underwhelming remakes). Unlike their American counterparts that might have favored glossy jump scares and lame gore, countries and territories like Hong Kong, Thailand, and Japan leaned more towards an atmosphere of dread, replacing funny-looking specters with girls in white dresses and long black hair under remarkably effective white-based makeup.
The Eye is part of this elite group and also has its own American version starring Jessica Alba(!) but boasts more of a genuinely intriguing concept at its heart. See here (pun intended), the heroine does not have to spend the night in a haunted house nor does she have to fight the forces of darkness. Instead the Pangs’ script introduces a nicely conceived idea: a blind woman, after a successful surgery to regain her sight, has the ability to see the dead as well. Seeing is believing indeed, giving the directing duo an excuse to play visually in the way Wong Ka-mun perceives and interprets aesthetically the world around her. The only thing that Wong can do is close her eyes; she can’t change house, call an exorcist, or the ghostbusters for that matter. Unfortunately for her, she is stuck with that situation and all she needs to do is to figure a way out of living with this curse, a trope that is absent from supernatural horror films where characters do dumb mistake after dumb mistake.
“Are you ok, madam?”
The brothers stage some effective jump scares particularly in the first half, converting the violinist’s joy to despair showing promising results in the realm of horror. The problems start, though, when they attempt to over-explain everything (literally a person drops in Ka-mun’s orbit to explain things only to never be seen again!) in the second half, adding a proper dose of melodrama, an always prevalent element in Hong Kong genre entries and occasionally in Asian cinema generally speaking. As such, things are being deprived of suspense with a pace that drags the story when it should be producing heart-pounding jolts.
It does not help that Angelica Lee’s performance is not particularly memorable either - she lacks the pathos and acting range of a Maggie Cheung or Brigitte Lin, both of whom have played in genre flicks and bear more of a screen presence than Lee’s. Her romantic relationship with a good-hearted psychotherapist is not well-established either and the movie ends up sinking slowly since it takes itself so seriously ending up derailing itself in a particularly strange final act occurring in Thailand.
The Eye might be seen as a staple film and a more focused attempt from Hong Kong in the phobos sphere but its anemic script keep it at the mediocre range. Despite its well-crafted scares and atmosphere oozing that early noughties’ feeling, it does not have the necessary gravitas to keep the interest going. For a rainy night in with pizza at hand, it will do fine.
Seeing is not believing
+Stylist horror visuals
+Sense of dread
+Intriguing premise
-Overblown, melodramatic third act
-Lee’s mediocre performance
-Second half lacks any suspense