Review: The Eye (2002)

• Directed by the Pang Brothers
• Starring Angelica Lee, Lawrence Chou
• Released in 2002; DVD with English subtitles available
• Rating: 3/5

I'm not into horror films that much, but after hearing so much about The Eye, I decided to finally check it out.

It's pretty creepy and weird in an M Night Shymalan kind of way. I'm pretty sure this has been said before. But I couldn't help but think about Sixth Sense. There's even a nice twist that I think M Night might deploy in one of his films.

What I really enjoyed was the sound design. The sound was 90 per cent of the scare - the sound of the wheelchair as it tracked across the floor, the grinding sound of the raven, that crazy violin solo.

And the performance by Angelica Lee. Her big ol' brown eyes just can't ever get a handle on what she's seeing.

There's some good sight thrills as well. The elevator scene was especially nice.

This was a pan-Asian production. The directors live in Bangkok but are Hong Kong born. One of the backing studios is from Singapore. Part of the film was made in Hong Kong, part in Thailand. The credits are mostly in Thai. I'm not sure what language was used. I'm guessing it was mostly in Cantonese originally. The DVD I watched was either Mandarin or Thai. Finally, I settled on the Mandarin, as it seemed to match the speaking closest.