Blog From The Bench

Aside from sharing a similar premise, and the same directorial team (The Pang Brothers), The Eye and The Eye 2 are like very creepy oil and highly melodramatic water. The first film, a supernatural spook story about a blind girl given more than just her sight back as the result of a cornea transplant, was geared more toward horror and the macabre. But after wading through the 90 plus minutes of this confusing, convoluted cornjob, we wonder if the main purpose was to terrorize, or to theorize. There is more here about religion, spirituality, life, death, birth and reincarnation than good old fashioned scary movie shock value.

It has to be said that the Pang Brothers can deliver the horrific heebie-jeebies when they want to. There are several scenes in The Eye 2 that mesmerize with their meanness (smashed corpses twitching - and SPEAKING - as they slowly bleed out) and fascinate with their fluidity (most of the ghost glimpses here are excellent). Yet it's all in service of a story that is shockingly moronic. Apparently, Buddhism teaches that individuals close to death/giving birth have the ability to "see" those spirits waiting to be reincarnated. Our heroine, the awfully jittery Joey Cheng (played with irritating antsiness by Qi Shu) can't stand the fact that she's once again unlucky in love. So she attempts suicide in an insane effort at getting some attention. Her ploy doesn't work, and all she ends up with is a newfound ability to see unhappy specters standing around maternity wards and LaMas classes.

At least twice in the film we are told that these spirits mean no real harm, they just want a chance to live again. They do not intend to possess the newborn, or turn them into some manner of Omen-style Hellspawn. But that doesn't keep Joey Cheng from going bugbutt for an hour and thirty minutes. She cries and screams and gnashes her teeth at the sight of the spooks. She goes into moody, dreary funks over finding out she's pregnant, and a phantom's target. And yes, she tries killing herself multiple times, all as a way of (a) still trying to get back at her ex, (b) resolving her own interpersonal conflicts with emotional failure, and (c) to keep a dark haired gal ghoul from slipping into her womb for a little fetus frightening. In between all these hyper-emotional workouts, we get expectant mothers blaring and bleeding, perverted poltergeists peeping on people in toilets and from under tables, and a lot of misguided maternity machinations. The end is particularly perplexing, since it seems to be much ado about nothing - or better yet, much ado about accepting the cosmic circle of life.

Frankly, the only saving grace in The Eye 2 is that we don't have the typical Asian demon doll spastically crawling and croaking at the camera as her black hair flows like foul fettuccini in CGI wonder. True, our apparition here is a baneful brunette with etherealness woven into her afterlife appearances. But she's not really evil. She's just picked the wrong pregnant person to pester. Without a story to get excited about or a twist ending to drag us along, The Eye 2 is bewildering and boring. Ever since Haley Joel Osment made seeing dead people "cool", the notion of looking beyond this reality into the otherworldly plane surrounding us has been a chilling, thrilling idea. The Pang Brothers have enough visual flair to concoct a super suspense shocker. Sadly, this baby birthing bunkum is not it.

Score: 60