Two stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, violence and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.8.08
If mood and atmosphere were everything, The Eye would be a modestly effective little chiller.
Directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud maintain a reasonably edgy level of suspense — for awhile, anyway — and set up all sorts of spooky little interludes, most of them punctuated by unnecessarily loud blasts from Marco Beltrami's soundtrack (the better to make viewers jump, you understand).
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| In one of this weak film's more successfully unsettling moments, Sydney (Jessica, left) peers into her bathroom mirror and sees the reflection of an entirely different young woman. But when Sydney begins to conflate her own identity with that of this mysterious stranger, it's just another of the many ways in which this laughable failure loses its vision. |
Unfortunately, the story makes no sense whatsoever.
All concerned seem to recognize this rather serious problem, since the film opens and closes with lengthy expository voice-overs by star Jessica Alba, whose monologues — particularly the one at the end — apparently are intended to decipher plot points that aren't explained a whit in Sebastian Gutierrez's ham-fisted screenplay.
These little speeches don't help. Indeed, the concluding soliloquy prompts snickers of unintended laughter.
The Eye is yet another American remake of a recent Chinese horror film — in this case, 2002's far more effective Pang brothers chiller, Gin Gwai — that "borrows" its premise from a hoary Hollywood horror cliché going back to the dawn of time: the transplanted body part with a mind of its own.
The most famous early example is 1935's Mad Love, an adaptation of Maurice Renard's oft-filmed short story, "The Hands of Orlac," which starred Peter Lorre as an insane doctor who operates on a pianist's injured hands, with deliciously awful results.
In this modern update, Alba plays Sydney Wells, a renowned Los Angeles concert violinist. Sydney is talented, intelligent and independent; she also happens to be blind, thanks to a childhood incident with firecrackers that still haunts her older sister, Helen (Parker Posey), who feels responsible for the accident. After a brief prologue that establishes the degree to which Sydney has built a successful life and career, we're whisked into an operating theater as she undergoes a double corneal transplant.
The goal: restored sight.
(So why, then, isn't this film called The Eyes, plural? Good question...)
The procedure works, but rather too successfully. After a few days of blurred disorientation, Sydney gradually realizes that some of the people — and things — she now sees aren't really there. Indeed, before savvy filmgoers can even mutter the phrase "I see dead people," Sydney comes to that conclusion all by herself.
