THE EYES HAVE IT
First “Teeth,” now “The Eye,” the latest American remake of a Japanese Horror film — a trend started by the success of the American remake of “The Ring” — movies this year seem to be increasingly (albeit unconsciously) troubled by the threat posed to human existence in an era dominated by the Symbolic, thanks to the seemingly unstoppable digitalization of life as we know it. And all in a year when, at least on the Democratic side of things, the race for executive authority seems to be grounded in epistemic authority, i.e., the written page, as in the old joke, “What’s black and white and read all over?” That one of those candidates was raised without a father, and the other is a mother, makes it all the more interesting.
Thus, the latest remake, “The Eye,” starring Jessica Alba, who rose to fame starring in the tv show, “Dark Angel,” shortens the distance between the symbolic and the real (Death) by eliminating the need for the analog video cassette and tv set Samara must rely on to share her disturbing vision of the real. Alternatively, Alba’s character is given all of the technology she needs to navigate the symbolic through a cornea transplant. Once a blind violinist who was compelled to live almost totally in the imaginary, the realm of the ear and the inner eye, she now has access to the external world. Such access, as in The Sixth Sense, means that “She can see dead people.” Inevitably, what the film may suggest is that now that the maternal/imaginary is threatened with extinction, all of us may see dead people if we look hard enough because — increasingly forced as we are to live in a virtual/digital world — we have essentially become dead. Here’s a review from today’s NYT.
Dr.B.
It’s Enough to Make Anyone Blink
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
“I want to see the world like everyone else,” the blind violinist Sydney Wells (Jessica Alba) whines at the beginning of “The Eye,” the latest Western deconstruction of a successful Asian horror movie.
If only Ms. Alba’s narration — as vapid as her acting — were the film’s only problem. Blind since the age of 5, Sydney is unprepared when a cornea transplant not only restores her sight but also allows her to see dead people. As the departed stalk her in elevators and accost her in corridors, Sydney resolves to trace the origins of her new peepers. Naturally, every step of this journey must be spelled out — twice.
The original “Eye,” directed by the Thai filmmakers Danny and Oxide Pang, was an insinuating ghost story that cleverly exploited cinema’s fascination with all things ocular. But what the Pangs accomplished with little more than a talent for framing and focus, this remake (directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud) fails to achieve, despite an arsenal of strobe lighting and crashing chords. The debt owed by both movies to “The Sixth Sense” and “The Mothman Prophecies” is only more obvious.
Louder and more literal than its inspiration, “The Eye” benefits from a spiky performance by Alessandro Nivola as Sydney’s rehabilitation counselor. “Your eyes are not the problem,” he tells her at one point. He is so, so right.
“The Eye” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has bleeding eyeballs, burning corpses and screaming violins.
THE EYE
Opened on Friday nationwide.
Directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud; written by Sebastian Gutierrez, based on the film “Gin Gwai” by Jo Jo Yuet-chun Hui, Oxide Pang and Danny Pang; director of photography, Jeffrey Jur; edited by Patrick Lussier; music by Marco Beltrami; production designer, James Spencer; produced by Paula Wagner, Don Granger and Michelle Manning; released by Lionsgate and Paramount Vantage. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes.
WITH: Jessica Alba (Sydney Wells), Alessandro Nivola (Dr. Paul Faulkner), Parker Posey (Helen Wells) and Rade Serbedzija (Simon McCullough).