Taiwanese 'cute princess' becomes a horror queen in the Pangs' 3-D Eye film

The Pang Brothers are back in Thailand, working on the fourth in their Eye series, The Child's Eye, which is budgeted at US$4.5 million and touted to be the first Asian 3-D film.

Playing the lead role is Rainie Yang, a 25-year-old Taiwanese pop singer and TV-drama star who's been dubbed the "cute princess". The Nation's Sunday Leisure section had a story about Rainie and The Child's Eye this past weekend. A similar story is online at the China Post.

Here's a snip from Yasmin Lee Arpon's feature for Sunday Leisure:

Rainie’s appearance in a horror movie is not an expected choice for a young idol, but her choices have never been predictable. In her last outing, Spider Lilies, she played a webcam girl plying her sexy-cute wares nightly on the Internet.

Asked about Child’s Eye, Rainie says it’s not just another horror film out to scare people.

“I’m the lead actress, but I’m not constantly screaming, like you usually see in movies like this,” she tells us during a break in shooting in Bangkok, with the translation help of Cai Shanshan of the China Daily. “It was quite hard for me at the start because I’d never tried this before. It’s demanding, because it all depends on your own imagination. But I feel lucky that I could try such a special role, the kind that actors always want to try but rarely get the chance.”

She co-stars with Hong Kong actor Shawn Yu. He plays one of six tourists who come to Thailand and disappear. Rainie plays his girlfriend, who'se tryhing to get him back.

The Pang Brothers have more to say:

“The elements are quite the same, but the feeling is different,” Oxide Pang, who’s co-directing with sibling Danny, says, drawing comparisons with other pieces of The Eye series.

“The audience will be more scared,” he assures The Nation.

The shoot will take two months and post-production at least another six because of the 3-D effects.

“This being the first 3-D film in Asia is our selling point,” says Pang. “This means we have to spend more money on the special effects.”

The original background for the script was last November’s closure of Bangkok’s airports by anti-government protesters, but that’s been jettisoned.

“It’s basically a teenage movie about six travelers coming to Thailand and vanishing. There’ll be lots of supernatural effects.”

Early reports on the film mentioned a monster and an underworld that’s made of the paper facsimiles that Chinese traditionally burn as offerings to deceased ancestors.
The movie is set to premiere in Hong Kong next year.

Meanwhile, the Pangs have completed The Storm Warriors, their sequel to The Storm Riders. They filmed the Hong Kong martial-arts fantasy in a green-screen-equipped waterfront warehouse last year in Bangkok. It's due for release in December.