The Eye (2008)

I saw The Eye - not this one, but the Pang Brothers' Hong Kong original - about seven years ago when I was in my all things J-Horror phase, and while I found the concept rather unique, there were glaring flaws in the story and in the way the filmmakers decided to deliver their scares. The idea that a person who has been blind for her entire life can become so quickly dependent on her sight seems a little too convenient, and the incorporation of ideas that suggest organs contain parts of their original donors is a bit of a horror movie cliche. Also, the scare scenes are the typical boo-jump scares where everything is quiet and then the sound editors decide to racket the volume to ear piercing levels as the ghosts decide to make their presence known. In other words, the scares are predictable and only occasionally effective. Now the problem that I have with this remake is the same problem I have with every USA remake of some popular J-Horror (this is the generic term used to describe all Asian ghost horror movies): the only fear these remakes have been able to instill in their audiences is a fear of subtitles. They take the same film, reshoot it almost frame for frame with American actors and American settings. All of the plot elements, no matter how flawed, remain the same. And almost always, something gets lost in the translation. Usually it has something to do with the cultural context of the original; in fact, the whole long haired female ghost dressed in white is a criticism of suppressed gender roles among the female population in Asian societies, and that certainly never comes across in any of these USA remakes. Basically, the filmmakers call this being faithful to the original. But when the original sucks because of glaringly lazy writing and predictable scares, you would think that Hollywood studios would try to correct these mistakes. The subtitle fear comes with the assumption that audiences have not seen the original, and thus, an opportunity exists to make a better film. Unfortunately, Hollywood has opted out to seize this chance every time they remake a J-Horror, and this 2008 version of The Eye is no different. There's no need to watch this movie, because it's the same bad movie that the 2002 original was, except this one's got a bigger budget and Jessica Alba.