Movie Review: The Eye
I remember watching the original The Eye a few years ago, and I found it to be typical Japanese horror: lots of freaky images, a little lackluster in other departments. One of the notes I had on the original was that the ending was a lot like The Mothman Prophecies.
Having put both the original Eye and Mothman Prophecies out of my head over the years, I had forgotten what that meant. And then was reminded. I really hate it when movies take these kinds of paths.
Sydney Wells (Jessica Alba, in what must be her 400th film to come out in the last eight months) is a blind violinist who gets an eye transplant. Before you start jumping for joy for this indelible character, realize that the eyes she receives allow her to see dead people and angry shadow-people that officially take dead people’s lives. She keeps seeing a child’s fiery death for some reason. And, imagine that, no one believes Ms. Wells when she reports this stuff. Because, hey, what does an up-until-recently blind person know what’s she’s really seeing, anyway?
Most of the reporting goes to Dr. Paul Faulkner (Alessandro Nivola), who thinks Sydney is crazy until he finally realizes how hot she is. Obviously, Sydney has some sort of connection to the person who donated the eyes, and it requires her to find out this connection so that she can be a happy person.
Part The Sixth Sense and the 1994 Madeleine Stowe thriller Blink, The Eye is a bunch of random scary occurrences, some startling, mostly pointless, until that aforementioned Mothman Prophecies type of ending. I am weary of ghost thrillers where dead people show up spouting some nonsense. Take, for instance, the little kid who keeps asking, “Have you seen my report card?” We then figure out that he must have had a ridiculously strict dad, and the kid killed himself. I think a better thing to say is, “Have you seen my backbone?” because at least there would be a double meaning to the thing.
I think we’ll have a little break from Ms. Alba for awhile now that she’s preggers. Perhaps when all is said and done, she’ll attempt to be more daring and fearless in future movie choices and roles. I don’t think anyone shows less personality in film than Alba, and she’s almost always humorless. Until then, she’s always just going to be a pinup.
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