Avoid it. Boring, lame, didn’t get it, been there done that.
Okay, so I saw “The Eye” recently. I saw it on HK VCD but I guess it was recently released in America and the promotion was something like (If you like “The Ring” then you’ll love “The Eye”)
Well, it’s nothing like “The Ring”. In fact it’s hardly even scary. And, it’s a basically the same story as 6th Sense. Sorry if that gives it away for you.
**MINOR SPOILERS**
The story is about a blind woman who gets an eye transplant after which she can not only see the real world but she can also see dead people, just like 6th Sense. And, just like 6th Sense she needs to help them solve their problems so that they can move on to where they are supposed to go. So, first of all, we’ve already seen this story.
** MAJOR SPOILERS**
But there are several problems I had with the movie.
First off it was over done. The second encounter with a dead person is not actually scary. Her eyes are not focused yet and some guy passes her in the hall. But the camera and the music jump all over so I guess you are supposed to be scared even though from her point of view there should have been nothing scary about it.
Would it be scary to see dead people? Well, I don’t know but it seems like in 6th Sense the kid finally gets used to it and just talks to them and helps them out. In “The Eye”, the girl just mostly freaks out even though the first person she sees where she comes to understand that she is seeing dead people is a kid that just got hit by a car. He’s not scary at all. He just looks like a normal kid and he is just as surprised to look down at his dead body as she is. You’d think that might start to calm her down. It’s not like she seeing demons or people out to get her.
A few scenes later she sees a kid she became friends with while she was in the hospital for her eye transplant. As she is talking to the kid she realizes the kid is dead. She died during an operation just a few minutes earlier and she comes to say goodbye and to tell the main woman to quit freaking out and just be calm, everything will be alright. Then the kid is escorted off by some non threatening *dark guy*. You’d think that might be enough to get the main character to deal with her new ability but nope.
Finally she finds out that her eyes belonged to a girl that could see these dark things coming for people. Because of that this girl knew people were going to die just a few minutes before they died. She would try to warn them, fail, they would die and then people would say it was her fault and so she became an outcast and eventually killed herself.
Okay, whatever, it was sad that she was an outcast.
So, right after that the main girl now sees these dark things, 50 to 100 of them coming through a traffic jam and she relalizes that there is going to be some kind of disaster and they are all going to die. She trys to warn them but of course no one listens and a big tanker truck explodes killing them all and blinding her again.
In the end she says something like “I was never meant to be able to see”. WTF! First of all, so what if she couldn’t stop their deaths, at least in that particular case see could have helped herself. Being able to see and avoid a coming disaster sounds like an ability I’d want to keep. On top of which, it was made clear, like the kid in 6th sense, she could also help others. But I guess because she’s a wuss she’s happy to be blind for the rest of her life and let all those people suffer. (1)
What—-ever.
Oh wait, and then there was the last incredibly cheesy moment where you get to know she hooked up with her doctor. If that’s not right out of cheesy lame Asian melodramatic TV soap I don’t know what is. Ugh 
2 stars out of 5
(1) By the way, there’s a dead guy in her elevator. So she can’t see him anymore. She still knows he’s there which seems like it would be pretty freaky. If she had kept her ability see could have helped him out and then her elevator wouldn’t have some freaky dead guy in it.
I have to disagree with the ‘don’t see it’ review, although I agree with your general assessment. I found the film a while ago at this indie video store that gets foreign films before anyone else. at this time, no promotion at all had been done for The Eye in the U.S. (barely see any even now). so I just rented the film assuming it would be lame, no high expectations. Because of this, I was scared shitless a few times. I enjoyed it, but I don’t think it’s a must see. on the other hand, before I saw The Ring, japanese friends were literally warning me that the movie was scary and somewhat based on reality, “so watch out!” I saw The Ring, and was absolutely not scared, ever, not one bit. I think my expectations were too great. Expectations can make it or break it.
I’ve seen this movie a while back, and I didn’t think it was that bad. Sure, there were some parts that’s been done before, but a lot of movies nowadays have plots or settings that have been done somehow in previous movies… And you can’t say the whole movie was one big storyline full of bits from other movies, just that probably the original stuff wasn’t enough to make this movie it’s own? I think this was the best scary movie I’ve seen coming from Hong Kong…
But that could also be because there are just too many crap (horror) movies produced here.
THE EYE is a shameless ripoff of THE SIXTH SENSE, albeit a suprbly made one. It’s not scary (though folks in Hong Kong and Taiwan were abuzz about it -a nd it inspired its own wannabes, like MY LEFT EYE SEES GHOSTS – itself supposedly based on a book), but the acting, writing, cinematography and direction are solid. That makes it all the more a waste.
I really like some of the Pang Bros.’ work, like BANGKOCK DANGEROUS, but this was a slick, paint-by-numbers flick that should have played down the ghosts and went for a dramatic side.
A superior Hong Kong Ghost story from a few years back was Ann Hui On-wah’s VISIBLE SECRET (I’ll pass on its lesser sequel), and even THE EYE’s production company made the wonderfully wicked THREE (feturing Thai, Hong Kong and South Korean segments).
THE EYE is overrated; especially in the west. It’s not shit, but far from shineola simply because it is such an outright SIXTH SENSE wannabe.
Old school Hong Kong horror worth checking out: Tsui Hark’s DON’T PLAY WITH FIRE (sometimes available under the title DANGEROUS ENCOUTNERS OF THE FIRST KIND – stay away from the Mandarin version as it’s cut to shit), SEEDING OF A GHOST, DEVIL FETUS, and a handful of Dennis Yu productions like THE IMP (a classic), THE BEASTS (a New Territories take on THE HILLS HAVE EYES/ I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE), and EVIL CAT, as well as the Mak Bros. production of POSSESSED, and gems like BLOOD RITUAL, the Shaw brothers BLACK MAGIC series, and some of Leong Po-chih’s early films like HE LIVES BY NIGHT (a cracking slasher pic) and THE ISLAND (another HILLS HAVE EYES style yarn). Billy Tang Hin-sing’s RUN & KILL and DOCTOR LAMB really shock, as does Herman Yau Lai-to’s THE UNTOLD STORY and EBOLA SYNDROME (a loose remake of UNTOLD STORY with OUTBREAK thrown in for measure).
I’d also recommend the horror comedies THE ETERNAL EVIL OF ASIA, any of the MR. VAMPIRE films (4, official), and the Sammo Hung productions of VAMPIRE VS. VAMPIRE, ENCOUNTERS OF THE SPOOKY KIND 1 & 2, SPOOKY SPOOKY, and THE DEAD & THE DEADLY.
As for Japanese horror – check out Takeshi Miike’s AUDITION, the Juzo Itami production of SWEET HOUSE, and the original version of JIGOKU.
Korean horror: TELL ME SOMETHING and BLOODY BEACH were recent bits of solid, cheap thrills.
Thai: try BODY JUMPER or 303: FEAR, FAITH & REVENGE if you can find ‘em.
I would recommend “My Left Eye Sees Ghosts”. I caught it in cantonese with english subs and it worked very well for me. Some parts were funny and the main character got to grips with her ability quite quickly. Not at all like The Eye ^_^ Touching story, too.