DVD Corner: The Eye Greg Kaczynski

It’s amazing that an American studio can find a pair of French directors and completely strip a good Chinese horror film of all the things that made it good. Where the original version was a slow, atmospheric film of mystery and terror, Jessica Alba’s The Eye is a lumbering, clumsy mess that forces itself down viewers’ throats with pounding music and middling acting.

Alba plays Sydney Wells, a world-class violinist who is blind and getting an eye transplant. Directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud feel the need to spend the first several minutes of the film giving audiences scene upon scene of her feeling her way along walls, fumbling in the fridge and doing obviously blind things to remind us that she’s blind; yes, it’s that kind of dumbed down movie.

After she gets the surgery, Sydney’s slowly besieged by visions of dead people, death and hallucinations of fire. Eventually she convinces her eye therapist, Dr. Faulkner (Alessandro Nivola), to help her find out who the eyes came from so that she can understand why these things are happening.

One of the main problems with this version of The Eye is that a large portion of the fun of the story is trying to figure out why Sydney is having these bizarre visions, yet in the opening minute of the movie, the filmmakers give it all away. Even though it’s not explicitly spelled out, viewers understand where the eyes came from, ruining any potential suspense for the first hour of the film. The insulting thing is that during that first hour, they still treat the origin of the eyes as unknown (because it is unknown to Sydney), leading it to drag on.

On top of being shoddily paced, many of the characters are utter throwaways. For example, while at the hospital, a young girl with cancer, Alicia (the adorable Chloe Moretz), approaches Sydney while she’s in bed. From the dialogue, we understand that the little girl wants to make Sydney feel better, but why? There’s no establishing who she is or why she’s drawn to Sydney, she’s just there, so we all know that something (can you guess what?) will happen to her later on.

The ending is a whole beast in and of itself. The original finished in a way typical of Chinese cinema, poignant and sad, and it worked--it gave the film weight. Alba’s Eye chooses the extreme Hollywood happy ending that, in style, is embarrassingly reminiscent of a sitcom.

Since The Ring, Americans can’t get the tone of Asian horror right, and this film is no exception. The nature of the story, the fact that Sydney isn’t in any immediate danger from these visions, lends itself to a slower paced, atmospheric film while this version blindly ramps up the sense of action, ignoring the natural direction of the story. Scenes that were once terrifying (our heroine trapped in an elevator with a dead guy who floats towards her) are made absurd with a pounding soundtrack and frenetic cuts. Entire subplots are set up in this version (the little boy ghost and his report card) but eventually tossed out in favor of more high-intensity scenes that amount to nothing remotely interesting.

Plagued by average acting, poor writing, improper tone and a wealth of time devoted to spelling out obvious plot points, The Eye is best left unseen. So is there anything redeeming on the 2-disc special edition DVD set (Lionsgate, MSRP: $34.98)?

Oddly enough, yes, but not much. The deleted scenes are the real gems on the first disc. Totaling almost 11 minutes, several of the scenes show off the more elaborate special effect sequences that surprisingly do capture the creepy feel of the original. Presumably, these were trimmed to maintain the PG-13 rating.

Some of the other deleted scenes are actually valuable to the story, such as the exposition of the little boy ghost and showing Sydney working with her therapist (as opposed to the awkward rambling monologue audiences are given in the final cut). As to why these scenes were cut, one possibility is that The Eye’s editor, Patrick Lussier, was actually worse than its filmmakers.

In addition, there are four featurettes, starting with “Birth of the Shadowman,” a brief (1:38) piece on the actor who plays the “Shadowman” (death) and the gear he had to wear. It’s actually disappointing to see how good the original makeup looked, only to have it disappear behind layers of CGI.

Then there’s “Becoming Sydney” (4:48), an unintentionally hilarious segment that treats preparing Alba for her role as a blind musician akin to Daniel Day-Lewis studying for My Left Foot. It’s hard not to feel sorry for the blind gentleman who was training Alba when he says that he hopes this film does wonderful things for blind people everywhere. Oh, what did the producers tell him?

The featurette with the most potential is “Shadow World: Seeing the Dead” (8:48), which begins with various field experts talking about cellular memory (the idea that organs carry memories of people with them), but gets in its own way as the producers try to cover too many other topics including telekinesis, what and where the soul is and ghosts. It’s all too much for a segment that runs less than 10 minutes, and its lack of focus works against it.

Finally, viewers get “The Eye: The Explosive Grand Finale” (6:08), where the pyrotechnician for the finale talks about the process of setting up and getting the final explosive special effect.

Also of note, the digital sound throughout the film is impressive. With generous use of the back channels and a 5.1 mix, it’s really a shame that the movie itself isn’t better.

The second disc is simply a digital version of the movie that can be downloaded onto your computer, iPod or whatever portable digital device you prefer. Though with a movie this dull, I can’t imagine wanting to take it anywhere with you.

The Eye is now available on DVD.