PRINTTake Two - The Eye
February 7, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
And the Award for Mediocrity goes to … Jessica Alba.
In The Eye, a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong film Jian Gui, Alba plays Sydney Wells, a blind violinist who lost her sight at the age of 5 in a tragic firecracker accident while playing with her sister, Helen (Parker Posey). She undergoes a cornea transplant that also transfers the morbid experiences of the late donor. Alba regains vision as well as access to the paranormal world and the grim reaper’s calendar of events as her sight develops.
The film makes a weak attempt to redeem itself in the last 30 minutes but the results are disappointing. The Eye drips with clichés and predictability. No low-budget film is complete without the weepy back-slide-against-the-wall scene. Now Alba can check off one more item on her list of things to accomplish during her underwhelming acting career.
Alba as a professional violinist was more unbelievable than her claims to her doctor (Alessandro Nivola) - who surprise, surprise also becomes the love interest - about seeing the dead. Her unnatural acting fits quite nicely with the film’s supernatural motif.
If aspiring filmmakers would like to know how to take a decent thriller concept and completely and utterly butcher it, they should look no further than The Eye. Seeing might be believing, but moviegoers need not see this film to believe how miserable it is.
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