The Eye (2008/Lionsgate Blu-ray + DVD)

 

Picture: A-/B     Sound: A-/B     Extras: C     Film: D

 

 

Hollywood has been ripping off ideas from around the world for just about as long as anyone can remember and the recent trend is to take Asian horror films and convert them for American audiences. However, in the transformation process something is loss because rather than be unique, stylized, fresh ideas, they are typically gutted C-grade material that is void of anything that made the original memorable or watchable, and with some commercial successes like The Ring, there are more excuses to make these films and roll the lucky die yet again. This time we get Jessica Alba in The Eye, which is a remake from the 2002 film Gin Gwai AKA The Eye from Hong Kong (I reviewed that film several years ago here  http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/551/Eye,+The+(Japanese).

 

This re-tread is just about as awful as many of the others that attempt to recycle the material and pass it off as something inventive or creative.  Casting Jessica Alba was obviously an attempt to get a young and popular actress into the lead role in order to get some attention. Plus giving the film a PG-13 rating enabled the film to be accessible to a younger audience as well, but nothing can save the bland screenplay penned by Sebastian Gutierrez and the direction of inexperienced filmmaker David Moreau and this seems like a pairing that enables more studio control.  Even when a film is remade with the right people involved there are many challenges that are hard to overcome, which was certainly the case with some of the better remakes like 2002’s Insomnia, which was directed by a very competent Christopher Nolan and even starred Robin Williams and Al Pacino.  No matter how hard they attempted to stick close to the original 1997 film, it seems like just a shadow of it, where it retained some of the physical attributes of the original, but could not maintain much of the emotion depth that the original film had, the same is true here and to an even more extreme. 

 

The storyline is quite simple.  Alba plays a woman who for nearly her entire life was blind, but due to the advancement in technology gets a transplant to restore her vision completely.  Her eyesight does not come back 100% right away, she has to gradually gain her sight back as first things are very blurry and over the course of time her body makes the necessary adjustments to compensate and integrate her new peepers.  However, what she didn’t think she would be getting with her new eyesight was horrible visions that seem to haunt her and how a psychological battle begins as she is tormented with these images and cannot seem to maintain control of her imagination.  The original film and concept is a rather good one, especially as it makes some interesting statements about how we might not always get what we think when we wish for something or how the things that we lack are not always things that we need.  The cost of her sight may not be worth the price that it is costing her emotions. 

 

Alba looks like she could have phoned this performance in, especially as she tries to over-act in many of the scenes as you can easily see how she is attempting to make this venture down a more reputable path and re-establish herself as not just scenery, but a true actress.  The mistake that she failed to realize is that a bomb like this is exactly what ruins actors in milliseconds, especially ones that do not have the long-term credibility and resume to compensate.  That’s not so say that Alba has not had some great successes as she typically chooses good projects to partake in, especially Sin City and of course The Fantastic Four.  Hopefully she will learn from these mistakes! 

 

The DVD and Blu-ray issued for this film are miles apart in many respects.  Both present the film in the 2.35 X 1 scope framing with the Blu-ray presentation being 1080p High Definition, which by doing a quick A/B comparison quickly shows the limitation that DVD always had and still has.  The DVD is rather drab in its presentation of the film and while it looks sharp and detailed, but it also appears compressed and soft.  The Blu-ray on the other hand looks much sharper with more accurate colors and gives a very three-dimensional appearance to the film.  Dark colors really stand out and the full color spectrum is realized on the Blu-ray disc, which is really apparent in several key scenes as we see the depth of color and the gradient hues rather than muddy color reproduction. 

 

If the picture quality doesn’t stun you, than the audio track on the Blu-ray certainly will, especially in direct comparison to the bland Dolby 5.1 on the DVD.  The Blu-ray steps it up a notch again with a DTS-HD 7.1 audio track that is incredibly detailed with some truly great sonics at times.  While this particular title might not serve as a great demo disc, the audio and picture alone might lend themselves to at least a quick tour of the capabilities of what Blu-ray can offer.  The soundfield is very deep and expansive, while dialogue is evenly placed and gives a three-dimensional experience to match the visuals. 

 

For another comparison there is also a standard definition PC digital copy of the film on a separate disc that is compatible with iTunes and Windows Media Player.  It’s about on-par in many respects with the DVD, but might be a bit sharper overall, but then again many factors will come into play with the type of graphics card and monitor that are used. 

 

There are some other featurettes as well to add to the overall value of the 2-disc Blu-ray and DVD editions as well as some deleted scenes, so those that are fans of this film will have lots to enjoy.

 

 

-   Nate Goss