Tonight’s DVD happened to be The Eye, a Hong Kong produced movie due to hit your local video store on October 21st, 2003. The movie, staring Angelica Lee and Lawrence Chou, produces much of the same creepy imagery that one would find in other recent Asian horror movies such as Ringu, which eventually spawned the American made The Ring.
The story revolves around Mun, who has been blind since she was two-years-old. As the film begins, she receives a cornea transplant at age twenty, which will give her the gift of sight again. As the film progresses, Mun must learn how to reuse a sense that many around her have had all of their lives. While she tries to understand the objects that take shape around her, there is also a sense of unease because there are things she begins to see or thinks she sees that defy logic.
When an elderly woman in the hospital rises from her bed and is accompanied out of the room by a shadow only to be announced as dead in the morning. Mun attempts to investigate the oddity as best she can. Since there is no way to understand yet if what she sees represents any real danger to her, she keeps the incident to herself. The strange occurrences continue once she’s released from the hospital and eventually drive her to seek help from her psychotherapist, Dr. Wah. At first skeptical, Dr. Wah soon begins to realize that there is more going on than anybody realizes and that Mun’s sight came at a price and with a mystery.
From there, a number of plot twists take place, and I won’t reveal them here, but suffice it to say there are many scenes that will provide some good chills for those patient enough to take in the different pace this film takes as a foreign import. The movie itself isn’t what I would qualify as a straight horror movie, though there is a high “creepiness” level around it, along with a number of downright scary scenes. If anything, this movie is perhaps closer in feel to “The Sixth Sense” than many of the other movies you may see in this Halloween month.
The film is in Cantonese with English subtitles and is in widescreen presentation.