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Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Movie Review: The Eye
'The Eye' only has average vision
By Brett Troxler
btroxler@wbrz.com
Web Producer
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PLAY OFFICIAL TRAILER
Sydney Wells (Alba) has been blind since she was 5 years old. Some 15 years later she undergoes a double cornea transplant in an attempt to restore her sense of sight, but when the bandages come off the blurry, beautiful world around her is not as she expects.
Beyond the blurs there are ghostly images and sounds that confound her. Those close to her, like her guilt-stricken sister Helen (Parker Posey) and Dr. Paul Faulkner (Alessandro Nivola), think she’s making it up or crazy. Because — surprise — she sees dead people.
Through this all she is trying to hone her new sense by understanding everything she is seeing, real and imagined, along with learning to read and how to interact in the world properly. But her visions come at a cost, as no one believes her, making her feel more isolated from the world than she ever has before. Her growing need to understand what is happening leads her to find out who her donor was, hoping such a discovery could answer some of the questions about her unexplained experiences.
A remake of the Hong Kong film “Jian Gui,” the first half of “The Eye” is a scene-by-scene account of new terrifying things Sydney witnesses, from flames to nightmares to conversations with those who aren’t there. It’s a downward spiral that threatens her sanity. The end result is not a terrible movie, just one that was ultimately average.
Alba plays a blind woman regaining her sight relatively well. She wears the glasses, walks with a slender white cane, trails her hand along a wall to keep her bearings and pours a drink with a finger dangled inside to let her know when the liquid is close to the top. It’s all very convincing, and having her character be a concert violinist is also a nice touch.
Thanks to some good makeup/effects, the look of Sidney’s blind and later recovering eyes is also realistic. Most of the ghouls she sees are a little too transparent to be frightening, though, so the special effects aren’t all candy and roses.
There are several scares scattered throughout the film, from the cheap to the musically foreshadowed. Some work, others don’t, but the layer of apprehension is enough to keep the average moviegoer interested until the end. Along the same lines, the film’s climax is only mildly intense, though its resolution completes the circle — even if it’s a bizarre and far-fetched trip.
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