An Eye For The Eye
The Eye. Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang, Dirs. 2003.
The Pang Brothers' The Eye adheres to the most important rule of any horror media: create atmosphere. The plot is a horror cliché. A transplanted organ, in this case a pair of corneas, imbues the receiver with the uncanny characteristics of the original owner. The film freely borrows from Hong Kong action and Japanese horror films. For all that, Danny and Oxide Pang, a Hong Kong film-making duo noted for Bangkok Dangerous, deliver the cold grue with a twist.
Transplanted organs are a horror culture tradition that goes back at least as
far as the classic, Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein. French writer Gerard deNerval's tale "The
Enchanted Hand" (1832) is the best known example of this motif. Here a
murderer's transplanted hand causes the organ recipient to commit crimes against
his will. But then again, scientists hadn't thought of corneal transplants in
Nerval's day. In The Eye, the organ transplant is made further eerie by
the addition of ghostly apparitions. Ghosts are all around, as Henrik Ibsen
would have it in his play Ghosts, and Lee Sin-Je's (Angelica Lee)
understated yet intense portrayal of the main character, Mun, draws the audience
into this crowded world of apparitions. Blind since the age of two, it is easy
to feel Mun to desire to see again after nearly 20 years, which makes the plot
believable and her a more sympathetic character. But more than that, she is a
model conveyer of fear, apprehension and disbelief.
After cornea replacement surgery, she starts to see shadowy, disappearing
figures. Thinking they are only after effects of the surgery, she does not find
them alarming at first, until her eyes heal and the spirits become clearer and
identifiable. She reacts to the horror without the wild-eyed shrieking that
hallmarks a Hollywood horror movie, but her utter terror still comes across.
Even more so, she projects the anxiety of never knowing when the next stranger
she sees will turn out to be a ghost. Little wonder she suffers from anxiety. A
young girl who comforts her while she's still in the hospital turns out to be a
ghost. Hungry people staring at meat in a shop window are apparitions. A
classmate in her calligraphy class is just a shadow. Spooks, revenants, or yurei,
call them what you will, they're all spirits wandering the earth.
No less important than Sin-Je's acting is the cinematography. The camera
lingers on insignificant walls, doorways and windows, making the audience
anticipate the horror. Hospital green becomes a horror in itself. Empty
corridors and staircases add to the overall effect of eeriness, heightened by
the lack of dramatic music. Unfortunately, the special effects are low-budget
and for the most part nothing new. After all, apparitions and slow-motion
explosions have been screened countless times. But there are saving graces
throughout the film: the best effect is Mun's haunted bedroom where ghostly
furnishings fade in and out, masking the real furniture from sight. It is an
impressive, albeit simple, effect, quite unsettling in that it happens
unexpectedly and ends for no apparent reason. Obviously, her new corneas are
trying to show her something.
Like most horror films, The Eye contains a discovery plot. Mun convinces her psychologist that she is not just "seeing things." On the verge of becoming an item, they fly off to Thailand to discover the truth about her cornea donor. At long last, they think they can find this truth among the superstitious but credulous people of a small Thai village. Mun finally finds inner peace in an unexpectedly poignant climax.
One of the film's sub-themes is the price of supernatural powers. Throughout
history, people have looked for ways to commune with the dead. In the 2nd
century B.C., the first shadow play was devised for Chinese Emperor Wu Ti, who
demanded a sorcerer bring back his favorite concubine from the dead. This was
only a sham, but it illustrates human beings fascination with what they view as
the power of necromancy. The problem that The Eye clarifies is that
communing with the dead is not always a desirable thing, especially if one wants
to live the life of an ordinary woman in the more scientific 20th century.
If the film does have an Achilles heel, it is that it is not logically
consistent. The directors never explain how Mun can also hear ghosts. After all,
she had a cornea transplant, which should have nothing to do with her hearing.
In addition, the cornea is simply the clear lens part of the eye. A retina
transplant would more logically account for seeing ghosts. Besides, there's an
old tradition that says that a murderer's image is captured on the retina of the
victim. Lapses of logic aren't critical to ghost stories, but they weaken the
suspension of disbelief, as they do in The Eye. Inconsistency
aside, The Eye is a worthy film, but the obvious comparison to The
Sixth Sense will dim this movie's reputation. The film takes on a different
and original twist as Mun learns to differentiate herself from her haunted
corneas. While The Eye obviously borrows from other horror films, both
Asian and American, it adds its own sensitive interpretation of the feeling of
horror. It casts a spell over the viewer that remains long after the special
effects and recycled plot are forgotten.