In a year of far, far too many Hollywood remakes of spooky Asian movies for the post-RING/GRUDGE PG-13 audience, here’s a disappointingly mundane reworking of the well-received 2002 Pang Brothers movie. It’s all the more disappointing for representing a compromised and anonymous American debut for David Moreau and Xavier Palud, the French directors of the outstanding THEM. Written by hack-for-hire Sebastian Guitterez, this EYE is strictly plotting-by-numbers stuff, with nothing new to add and a patronizingly simple narration that may scare off some viewers from the get-go in a way that wasn’t intended.
Remaking THE EYE as an American chiller only succeeds in drawing attention to just how derivative that original movie was in the first place. The Pang Brothers employed substantial style and a bunch of powerful scares to overcome their many borrowings from, ironically enough, then-recent American horror films like THE SIXTH SENSE and THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES (not to mention Stephen King’s THE DEAD ZONE and the oft-imitated central concept of THE HANDS OF ORLAC). This remake duplicates the original’s plot-holes (why can the heroine see AND hear dead people?) and fails to frighten thanks to an excess of only-a-dream shocks and heavy handed jump-scare set-ups. It plays like a redundant mishmash of all the “I see dead people” stuff of the past decade, including Dean Koontz’s ongoing ODD THOMAS series of novels.
Jessica Alba does more for this film than it does for her : given a rare chance to do some sincere character work rather than function as mere eye candy, she is commendable and appealing as a blind violinist who lost her sight in a firecracker accident at the age of five. Now she is getting it restored via a cornea transplant. Gradually adjusting to an alien visual world, she almost immediately starts seeing alarming ghoulish “escorts” around people who are about to die – and also sees ghosts of those who have just died. Alba spends much of the movie trying to convince ocular specialist Alessandro Nivola of her newly acquired gift/curse, while loving sister Parker Posey barely gets a chance to register in her vastly underwritten role.
Though well made and efficient in its reworking of some of THE EYE’s best scares (an elevator encounter, an unnerving mirror sequence where for the first time we see how Alba sees herself through the inherited corneas), this movie can’t overcome the strong sense of old-hat and suffers from pedestrian pacing. What’s more, the whole story plods toward a climax that’s notably underwhelming in comparison both to the suspenseful finale of the original and the equally good, influential wrap-up of THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES. While not as soul-suckingly naff as ONE MISSED CALL (another Asian remake from a wasted, talented French filmmaker), this EYE needs to be filed under “Forgettable and Pointless”, a file that may be very crowded by the end of this movie year.
-Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
