THE EYE

Hindsight's 20/40

By Harry Vaughn

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Anna Faris and the rest of the gang responsible for the Scary Movie sequels should think twice before they prepare to parody The Eye, the newest American attempt at a Asian horror movie remake. This studio-backed, Jessica Alba shock vehicle is so remarkably wretched and so consistently incompetent that it's far more successful as a comedy than as a horror film. If Scary Movie 12 (or whatever number it is) even attempts to poke fun at the gut-busting antics that go down in David Moreau and Xavier Palud's new film, they will hardly do The Eye justice. This is unintentional humor at the top of its game, matched only by a performance by Ms. Alba that expresses as much believable emotion as a piece of Pottery Barn furniture.

The laughs begin even before the film's opening credits, when Alba, stumbling down a Los Angeles street with a walking stick, states in a voiceover, "People say seeing is believing, but obviously that doesn't apply to me." That's because Alba's character, Sydney Wells, is blind and if her snappy opening zinger doesn't convince you otherwise, she's quite the spunky little visually-impaired protagonist. So spunky, in fact, that she is willing to go through with a dangerous surgery that could, if successful, repair her eyesight for good. However, little does Sydney know that once she regains her sight, she'll almost immediately be bombarded by ghoulish monsters from the underworld, along with angry and confused dead people straight out of The Sixth Sense.

Why Sydney sees dead people in the first place is not explained until the very end, but one thing is clear from the get-go: The Eye delights in having Sydney continuously eat shit, especially when she's being chased around by pissed-off imaginary ghosts. Whether she's hiding in her fluorescently lit apartment, or wandering fearfully down a particularly sketchy street in Chinatown, Alba always finds a way trip through a plate-glass window or fall unceremoniously into oncoming traffic. These are quite possibly the funniest moments in the film, especially considering that the filmmakers shot these sequences with the exact opposite intention. 

In the end, what makes The Eye such a rewarding guilty pleasure is its earnestness. One feels obligated to laugh out loud because the film never seems to be laughing at itself. Had it been able to acknowledge and poke fun at its own inherent shlockiness, then The Eye may have succeeded as a campy and self-aware horror movie. Instead, it sticks stubbornly to its misguided guns, leaving the viewer no choice but to see the film for what it really is: a 97-minute joke.

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