Notable Cast: Angelica Lee Sin-Jie, Lawrence Chou
Chun-Wai, Candy Lo Hau-Yam, Edmund Chen, Yut Lai So, Chadatirud Lertaveesin,
Yin Ping Ko
In college, I became obsessed a bit with Asian ghost films.
Sure, it was the 00s, and everyone and their mom had jumped on the J-Horror
boom a little, but I started digging much further and trying to get my hands on
everything that I could. One of those was The Pang Brothers’ massively
underrated The Eye (2002). Although it would be remade and memory-holed
by most of the cinematic world in 2008, this Hong Kong horror film had managed
to capture quite a bit of attention in the social circles I was navigating.
That’s on top of the fact that the Pang Brothers were quickly becoming a new
name in Hollywood at the time, even if those 15 minutes of fame would quickly
fade thanks to a system that handicapped so much of their more interesting
approaches with limited budgets or incredibly terrible scripts.
Nonetheless, The Eye was a film that I had latched
onto, and my memories of watching it on a possible bootleg I purchased at the
FYE where I was working were very positive. Now it's damn near 20 years later,
and Arrow Video has decidedly graced us with a new 4K release in the US, and I
was eager to finally get a chance to revisit a film that definitely struck a
chord with a much younger me.
The Eye might secretly be one of the best ghost films
in the post-2000s cinematic era. There’s something uniquely intimate and soft
about the film. It works in subtle ways, less concerned with scares and
traditional ghost horror and more focused on the growth of its lead character,
Mun, as she comes to terms with her abilities and what they mean both to her
and thematically.
In that sense, it differentiates itself from so many other
ghost films of the era and stands the test of time as a layered narrative about
seeing and addressing the unseen ghosts that live all around us in day-to-day
life. Sometimes it's scary to actually stop and "see" the things
around you when no one else does, but if you want to really be a better person,
you need to see them and not be afraid to try and help. This is the big
character arc that Mun, played by Angelica Lee Sin-Jie (who delivers one of the
better ‘blind person learns to see’ performances), has to learn the
responsibility that comes with sight and having the emotional and developmental
depth as a person to be empathetic with the unseen lingering emotions around
her.
It’s a character-driven narrative first and foremost. Many
of the supernatural elements, the ghosts that Mun sees after her cornea
transplant, which allows her to see for the first time since being a little
child, are presented with emotional attachment to them. Rarely are the ghosts
‘scary’ in a more traditional sense, although a tension-riddled score and the
intense performance from Angelica Lee Sin-Jie adds to the scare factor when the
ghosts themselves are not all that scary as much as they are unnerving, and it
just adds to the entire thematic weight of her character growth. Don’t get me
wrong, the Pang Brothers add just enough creep factor to the ghosts to warrant
a horror tag for the film, whether it's levitating feet, licking a window, or
just standing in the middle of a busy road, but the movie works even better
when the ghosts are just emotions made real, even if it's just sadness or
relief.
Perhaps the oddest piece of The Eye is that the film does have a distinct structure. While the first half focuses on the evolution of Mun’s eyesight and her growth as she navigates the world in new ways, the second half of the film finds her and her therapist/possible boyfriend traveling to Thailand to find the donor who gave her this sight. The film becomes a bit more plot-driven here as there is suddenly a mystery to be ‘solved’ on the surface level, and what the Pang Brothers do with it is much more in line with the tone of the first half rather than moving too far away from the character focus and subtle nature of its story to that point.
The shift in setting from urban to rural is a welcome change
of pace, and the film draws a parallel between Mun and her eyes’ donor in ways
that lend the narrative surprising emotional heft here. The film leans into
some occasionally predictable turns as the two characters’ parallel stories
intertwine, but it still manages to resonate with its themes in ways that keep
it from feeling too trite. Some patchy CGI and the bombastic nature of its
final set piece do feel a bit at odds with the rest of the film’s more subtle
style, but the manner in which the film caps off brings it all back in line to
make it all work, even if it feels like it could derail in the last 15
minutes.
If anything, as a full-grown adult now, I feel like The
Eye resonates far more meaningfully with me now than it did when I saw it
in college. Its choice to humanize the ghostly apparitions and add emotional
depth to the character through its supernatural elements underscores how the
film can stand up to some of the era's big names with similar approaches, like Dark
Water or Pulse. Sure, the style of the film, with its edits, hazy
filmed flashbacks, and washed-out color schemes, can date the visuals a bit,
but it’s hard not to love what The Eye is doing with so much of its
subtext, themes, and characters. It’s nice that this film wasn’t lost to time
in the wake of its misfire remake and the various sequels that can’t stand up
to this one. For those who haven’t had the chance, give The Eye a gander
and find that gem that too many have overlooked over the years.
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