The Eye

The Eye (2008)

Directed by: David Moreau and Xavier Palud
Written by: Sebastian Gutierrez
Starring: Jessica Alba, Alessandro Nivola, Parker Posey, Fernanda Romero, Rade Serbedzija, Rachel Ticotin, Obba Babatundé

American remake of the Chinese horror picture Mr. Red and I went to see on Sunday rather than watch the Superbowl.

About a blind woman who gets a cornea transplant from a dead chick who could see ghosts/the reaper/the future/all kinds of crazy ass shit. And then some stuff happens. Woo, it's scary.

Not so bad as I thought it was going to be. First of all, it was in English which cleared up the whole 'I can neither speak nor understand Cantonese' thing. And no, I must not use subtitles.

It was slicker and scarier than the original version, being more concerned with quick jumpy loud noise freaky bits and constant action. Yeah, action.

I think they changed the ending though. I don't really remember, but it seems to me that at the end of the other one a whole bunch of people died in a fiery fireball of fire. And they, like, get rescued in this one. Spoilers. Oh yeah.

Jessica Alba was actually better than I wanted her to be too. I never really liked Jessica Alba, in fact, I always hated Jessica Alba. Probably just cos I didn't like Fantastic Four (I'm more of a Scarlett Johansson person), but she did a pretty good job in this. She didn't look like she was wearing too much makeup either. She looked really awful, actually, which is good. If an actress will do a movie where she looks like crap through a good portion of it, she automatically earns my respect. Although I was wondering if she had any problems with her lip implants. Like, haunted lips or something.

Okay, some parts of it were pretty tacky, some of them even amusing (the people sitting behind us kept laughing. This was annoying), but it was okay.

I can't say I was crazy about buddy Alessandro Nivola there. I was convinced through the whole thing that he was on Pushing Daisies. This is not so. I was thinking of Raúl Esparza. Dunno where I got Alessandro Nivola. Nivola guy was in Jurassic Park 3, played that jackass with the camera.

In this he was supposed to be an eyeball rehabilitator or something, but he kind of looked like a homeless person. Well anyway, he seemed nice enough.

There are a couple of little, miniscule cock-ups I was having trouble with, the first of which being her ears. She gets a cornea transplant and suddenly becomes able to not only see but hear ghosts. Okay, it almost makes sense. Because sight dominates our perception of the world, when our eyes see something, they tell our ears that they can hear it (not a very good way of putting it, but trust me, it does make sense). However, sometimes she hears something, people making scary ghost noises out in the hall, and then goes to see what it is. That does not make sense.

Secondly, if she went blind when she was five, she wouldn't necessarily know that what she was seeing wasn't normal. Maybe there are shadowy figures walking around everywhere. Maybe everybody's room changes at 1.06 in the morning. She wouldn't know.

There was something else that was bothering me but I forget what it was.

None of these things are enough to really piss me off though. They just made me wonder.

Oh yeah, I was having a problem with 'cellular memory'. Sure, cells must remember what they are. For example, a liver cell must know it is a liver cell, and remember being a liver cell. If it didn't, people would just be amorphous blobs of stuff. Our brains would be our lungs and our spleens would be our skin.

However, can cells really remember who they belonged to? Can a liver remember what brand of cigarettes it's former owner used to smoke? Would they actually give someone the liver of a chainsmoker? Doesn't seem like a good idea, but oh well.

Just a bogus attempt at scientific explanation. The woman can see dead people walking around, there shouldn't be anything scientific about it.

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