The Eye (2008 film)
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| The Eye | |
|---|---|
 Promotional poster for The Eye |
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| Directed by | David Moreau Xavier Palud |
| Produced by | Peter Chan Paula Wagner |
| Written by | Original Screenplay: Jo Jo Yuet-chun Hui The Pang Brothers Screenplay: Sebastian Gutierrez |
| Starring | Jessica Alba Parker Posey Alessandro Nivola Chloë Moretz |
| Music by | Marco Beltrami |
| Distributed by | Lionsgate Paramount Vantage |
| Release date(s) |  February 1, 2008 April 24, 2008 March 13, 2008 |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $12 million |
| Gross revenue | $53,713,529 |
| Official website | |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Eye is a 2008 film starring Jessica Alba. It is a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong-Thai-Singaporean film of the same name. The film was rated PG-13 by the MPAA for "violence/terror and disturbing content."[1]
Contents |
[edit] Plot
Sydney Wells, at the start of the film, is a successful classical violinist, although blind since the age of 5. She and her sister had been playing with fireworks and they had been set off too close to her face, damaging her corneas.
Now, nearly 20 years later, Sydney undergoes a cornea transplant which causes her vision, albeit blurry, to begin returning. At first, she is confused and disoriented, unable to understand if what she sees is "real" or not. During her first night with her new eyes, her bedmate at the hospital dies, and Sydney, not understanding, watches her blurry figure being led away by someone else. During her stay, she also befriends a young girl named Alicia, who is there undergoing surgery for a brain tumor.
As time goes on, Sydney's vision begins to clear up and she struggles to understand the new world around her. Her therapist, Paul Faulkner, feels that her strange visions are her mind's way of interpreting what it was never able to before: including visions of fire, death, and the number '106'. Her bedroom walls keep changing to stone and back again, and she sees what appears to be the ghosts of people around her, including a young woman who walks right through her in the street just before she sees her body lying on the ground.
When a Chinese diner suddenly explodes around her, she finds herself in the charred remains. She learns that the accident that burned the diner down occurred weeks prior, revealing that her visions are of the past. Fleeing back to her apartment, she viciously smashes every light source and covers her windows (and eyes). Days later, her therapist forces his way in and removes her blinds, telling her to return to the real world.
Upon discovering that the face that appears in the mirror is not her own (which she finds out through photographs of her in the past), she becomes desperate to figure out who and what is sending her these visions. She begs Paul for help and finally convinces him to drive her to Mexico (at the risk of losing his medical license), in order to find out what happened to her donor, Ana Cristina Martinez.
They go to Ana Christina's house where they meet her mother, whose face looks slightly deformed. Sydney then sees a shadow behind Ana Christina's mother just as she has a heart attack. As Paul takes her to the hospital, Sydney goes into Ana Christina's room and sees more images. It turns out that young girl had committed suicide after failing to stop a factory fire that killed many of the people in the village and severely injured her own mother. After the fire, the deeply superstitious villagers, who had seen her crying outside the homes of people who were to die, believed she caused the disaster, and drove her to hang herself, calling her a witch and throwing stones at her.
Sydney and Paul return to the United States to discover the border is closed due to a high-speed chase on the other side. Dozens of vehicles are left stranded behind the closed gates. In the middle of the group of cars is a gas tanker with the number "106" on the front and a camper with a young girl in it; at the same time, many shadows move into the bus and take positions behind the people in it. Sydney then realizes that the images she keeps seeing - the number 106, bells, and a girl trapped in a fire - aren't of the past, but of the future. She rushes out of the car, shouting at everyone to flee, telling them a bomb is on the bus. The people listen and flee, just as a car smashes through the police barriers coming from the American side, and collides with the gas tanker. The tanker begins to leak gas and a spark causes the tanker to explode, destroying every vehicle in a chain reaction down the highway. Sydney's eyes are injured by flying glass during the explosion, which ultimately renders her blind again. She ends up glad to have used her visions to save lives and give Ana peace.
[edit] Cast
- Jessica Alba as Sydney Wells
- Alessandro Nivola as Dr. Paul Faulkner
- Parker Posey as Helen Wells
- Chloe Moretz as Alicia Milstone
- Tamlyn Tomita as Mrs. Cheung
- Fernanda Romero as Ana Cristina Martinez
- Landall Goolsby as Alex
- Rade Serbedzija as Simon McCullough
- Kevin Pham as Ghost Boy
- Jeffrey Nguyen as Boy being led away
- Hetty Pham as Ghost girl
- Chris Duong as Girl in the hallway
- Jason Pham as Boy in the hallway
[edit] Themes
Using the pretext of a psychological thriller and paranormal experiences, the film explores mental illness, and in particular, of the monothematic delusion known as Mirrored self-misidentification, referred to in the story as cellular memory.
Other themes include the concept of precognition, or premonition, perhaps becoming a popular cultural crossover from Asian beliefs about the unknown- since this film was a remake of a Hong Kong horror flick, and still retains Asian themes in the 2008 version.
[edit] Production
Remake rights to the Pang Brothers' original 2002 Hong Kong film, The Eye, were purchased by Cruise/Wagner Productions. This American remake follows Naina, a Hindi movie released in 2005, that is also based on the Pang Brothers' film.
[edit] Filming
Exteriors were shot primarily in the Downtown Los Angeles area. The establishing hospital shots - wherein Sydney is supposed to have had her sight-restoring surgery - are of LAC/USC Medical Center in the Boyle Heights district; 3/4 shots looking north- and southeast of the main 18-floor-high central building (the same bldg. used for the television soap-opera General Hospital). Fictionally, the burned-out Chinese restaurant is supposed to be located just three-blocks from where Sydney lives; the exterior scene, in which Sydney is about to get into a taxicab and travel to Mexico, was filmed on 7th Street, just east of Figueroa, in the downtown area.
[edit] DVD & Blu-ray
The film was released on Region 1 DVD and Region A Blu-ray on June 3, 2008. The DVD release comes in both a two-disc Special Edition version and a one-disc version containing four featurettes - "Shadow World: The Paranormal Past," "Becoming Sydney," "Birth of the Shadowman" and "Dissecting a Disaster" plus deleted scenes and the theatrical trailer. The two-disc DVD and Blu-ray versions include a digital copy of the film for use on Windows and Mac computers.
[edit] Reception
[edit] Critical reception
The film received generally negative reviews from critics. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 21% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on 68 reviews.[2]
[edit] Box office performance
The film opened in second place at the box office with $12.4 million, covering its $12 million budget. [3] As of April 10, 2008, the film has a domestic gross of $31,418,697. The film also did well in International box office--In United Kingdom it grossed $1,398,958 in its opening weekend at #2. As of now, the film has grossed $53,713,529 worldwide including $22,294,832 foreign into a successful Asian horror remake.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Official UK site
- Official American site
- The Eye at the Internet Movie Database
- The Eye at Rotten Tomatoes
- The Eye at Metacritic
- The Eye at Box Office Mojo
- The Eye at Allmovie
- Jessica Alba comments on The Eye
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