The Eye

Review By Matthew Rodgers

Following in the recent terror-strewn trail of genuine frightener The Orphanage comes this latest pillaging of the J-horror vault of increasingly repetitive shockers, this time its Danny and Oxide Pang’s The Eye seen through the skewered vision of Hollywood moneymen after a quick fix.

Sydney (Jessica Alba – Fantastic Four) is given the chance to see for the first time since childhood through an operation straight from the hospital of cinema make believe. As her vision slowly returns she realizes that not all is how she remembered it and as well as a new world of blurry shapes and kaleidoscope colours Sydney can see supposedly scary phantasms taking people to their doom.

You don’t need 20:20 vision to see that there are numerous problems with this needless remake. The scares are few and far between and of the “cat in a cupboard” variety with the cardinal sin being the revelation of the ghosts during the opening credits thus removing any possible fear factor or tension building from their subsequent appearances, add to that the fact that when they do pop up they are barely distinguishable CGI and the spooks are about as scary as Casper.

Any set-pieces that worked in the original are lost in translation – the stand-out corridor scene in particular – and taken on their own merits are little more than parlor tricks.

So it’s down to the stunning Miss Alba to make this believable, something she fails to do on every level; whether it’s the vapid voiceover “oh I bet music looks beautiful” or just the fact that she never convinces as a blind woman, putting on glasses doesn’t class as acting no matter how pretty the face. It’s perhaps quite harsh on a lead role given very little meat to chew on; her co-stars are uniformly bland with Alessandro Nivola offering zero chemistry as her skeptical counselor/love interest.

The impressive overblown action finale feels like it’s from another movie and by the time the slight “Omen” vibe appears during that latter stages its way too late to prevent the boredom and almost enough to wish for a slight onset of conjunctivitis.