[The Eye 2008]
Plot:Sydney Wells (Jessica Alba) is an accomplished, independent, Los Angeles-based concert violinist. She is also blind, and has been so since a childhood tragedy. As our story opens, Sydney undergoes a double corneal transplant, a surgery she has waited her whole life to have, and her sight is restored. After the surgery, neural ophthalmologist Dr. Paul Faulkner (Alessandro Nivola) helps Sydney with the difficult adjustment, and with the support of her older sister Helen (Parker Posey), Sydney learns to see again.

But Sydney's happiness is short-lived as unexplainable shadowy and frightening images start to haunt her. Are they a passing aftermath of her surgery, Sydney's mind adjusting to sight, a product of her imagination, or something horrifyingly real? As Sydney's family and friends begin to doubt her sanity, Sydney is soon convinced that her anonymous eye donor has somehow opened the door to a terrifying world only she can now see.

Cast:Jessica Alba, Parker Posey, Alessandro Nivola, Tamito Tamlyn, Francois Chau.

My Thoughts:Um.......what?

Review:Films like "The Eye" make one wonder how Hollywood comes up with this stuff. I mean, for a machine like Hollywood to keep churning out such awful redo's, and embarassments of and to the asian horror genre is indeed a mystery. Ever since "The Ring" back in 2000, it's been downhill ever since. And at this point, the asian horror remake as we know it is so far in the toilet it would take the worlds largest plunger to pull it out. Following up the dreadful "One Missed Call" remake, which was released in January, is Lions Gate's "The Eye", which is a remake of the Pang Brothers' "Gin Gwai", a film from 2002 where a woman who receives a cornea transplant begins seeing ghosts.

The original wasn't very intense, but it was creepy and chilling enough to be a good movie. The remake however, attempts to be intense...and fails. It attempts to be creepy, and again...it fails. It even attempts to draw attention away from it's dreadfully boring plot, lack of real scares, extreme lack of entertainment value, and one-dimensional characters with the stunning good looks of it's female lead Jessica Alba...and again, it fails. Jessica Alba has indeed matured as an actress, and in this movie it shows. However, it's not that Jessica Alba isn't a right fit for "The Eye"...it's that "The Eye" wasn't a right fit for her.

The film just drags along at such a boring pace, that Alba as Sydney Wells really seems like she's stuck in molasses as the film moves along. Alba plays the scared, delicate, and terrified Wells really efficiently, but the script quite frankly fails her. She's just not given enough to do beyond making depressed, sad, or scared faces to everyone she comes into contact with. There are a few scenes where she's pursued by a ghost or two, but other than one very creey scene in the hallway of her building involving a child, and another on the elevator...none of these spectre scenes live up to their potential.

Alba's supporting cast also fails her. An aging gracefully Parker Posey shows up in a few scenes as Wells sister who offers her comfort and solace after the procedure in which Sydney regains her eyesight. But following the typical pattern of films like this, when Sydney begins to see ghosts, her sister delivers the usual dialogue of "you're crazy, you're scaring me"...yada, yada, yada. What really hurts this movie is it sets itself up for something it simply cannot deliver during one of the films most vital scenes, where Sydney awakens after the procedure. After only a few moments of being awake, she sees a ghost...and at that point, the film teases that it's gonna now officially kick into high gear.

However, we never quite reach high gear in this movie. In fact...we never even get past slow mode. Also it was a huge mistake to not let the calm after the procedure set in with Alba's character before she started seeing CGI ghosts. To put the proverbial icing of awfulness upon this snoozer of a cake, the genius who wrote the film thought it would be cute to throw in elements of "Final Destination" and "Pulse" which pop up from time to time within the film, and tie into it deeply during the climax which despite it's fast pace, still doesn't deliver any real chills or thrills.

The climax does however deliver the same cliche we see in so many of these films, as Alba...like so many female leads in films like this before her, has to race against time and play detective in solving the emotional problems of some wayward spirit..."YAWN". With all of these mixed up and just flat out retarded elements mixed together, you have 90 minutes of boredom, frustration, and disappointment rolled into one with "The Eye". My advice, see the original at rental price, this remake is for the birds.

Positives:Two scenes which delivered atleast a few chills. Jessica Alba really is a good actress, and she tried her best to carry this film but she was carrying dead weight from the start and just never had a fair chance to make this film good.

Negatives:A lack of entertainment value, unscary jump scenes, most of the ghost moments were not scary, and mixing elements of "Final Destination" and "Pulse" (2006) into this movie was just the final nail in it's coffin. The supporting cast was also quite poor.

Overall:Terror-ble.





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