The Eye 2

Gin Gwai 2 (2004)

Directed by: The Pang Brothers
Written by: Jojo Hui
Starring: Qi Shu, Jesdaporn Pholdee (what a great name, huh?), Eugenia Yuan, Philip Kwok

Sequel to The Eye in title only. Yes, it's about ghosts which have a vague resemblance to the ones in The Eye, but it doesn't have much else to do with the first, except maybe in plot. They have a similar plot.

It's about a young woman who, after attempting suicide by overdosing on prescription drugs, gains the ability to see some freeky shit. She also finds herself haunted by this rather nasty ghost who wants to hurt her unborn baby, or so she thinks (Rosemary's Baby?).

Like in The Eye, the ghosts are frightening, and sometimes unbelievably grotesque (a woman with no face, for example, who seems intent upon staring at the main character in the back of a taxi. Or the people who jump off a tall building and lie on top of one another on the sidewalk, twitching and babbling at the lady), but not really evil, which I kind of like. It's a lot less upsetting in the long run than the unstoppable evil in say The Grudge or The Ring. It's also a hell of a lot more believable, too. How can one being be capable of pure evil? It's impossible. Okay, so maybe Samara is just a little... misguided. It seems unlikely, though.

I personally liked this one better than The Eye. It was scarier, had better production values and was more... I don't know, linear or something. It was on my wavelength. I dug it. And the music had definitely improved.

It was also kind of funny, in a weird way. She attempts suicide approximately five times during the course of the film, throwing herself off the roof twice. You'd think a woman who attempted suicide that many times and bit a man in the face wouldn't be allowed to just take her baby home. That seems a little weird to me. Of course, the guy she bit was really asking for it (and she didn't bite him anyway. They just thought she did).

Anyway, it was quite good, and benevolently scary. I want to see The Messengers all the more now.

END COMMUNICATION