THE EYE: 2002 Original + 2008 Remake - DVD Reviews

Surprised neither of these have been reviewed here: http://www.fearnet.com/search/message-boards/term%3A3643%20the%20eye

2002 Hong Kong Original  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye_(2002_film)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325655/  Ratings: 6.8/10 from 16,953 users 

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/eye/

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=eye.htm

2008 American Remake  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye_(2008_film)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0406759/ Ratings: 5.2/10 from 26,451 users 

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10008606-eye/

http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=eye07.htm

Alright, alright, alright. Enough GD stats.

The Pang Brothers original had some amateurish shots in it, the shifting between two locations/times effect was pretty cool, and the overall story was fair to kinda clumsy. 

The title 'Gin gwai' or '見鬼' has an interesting translation: http://www.worldlingo.com/en/products_services/worldlingo_translator.html = Seeing ogre.

Lord knows that was probably a better name for the film than 'The Eye', which is a misnomer since the film is NOT about some spooky eye that sees anything. No, it's about haunted body parts (cell memory in the Americanized version), namely a pair of corneas in a transplant. Yeah, so the title is misleadingly wrong and the haunted/cell memory in transplanted corneas thing is kinduva leap, but whatever. Going with the premise...

First spooky vision is of a spirit in the exam room. No bearing, point, purpose, or sensibility with the rest of the events. No dead people in the room. WTH?!

Second spooky vision is when a dark 'escort' is currently taking away the spirit of the recently deceased. Fine. Great cool. Patients that die in the hospital often have no staff that are aware of the event whatsoever and none of the other patients in a ward does either. 

Third spooky vision is when the little kid dies and then goes away with the dark 'escort'. 

Then all of a sudden she starts seeing the dark 'escorts' coming BEFORE a deathly event as some sort of premonition.

Umm... you changed the rules, Pang Bros. And when the American nubes remade it they pretty much just rubber stamped the exact same non sequitur story.

The review and revenue stats between IMDB, RT, & BOM geehaw that Amricans don't so much love remakes of foreign films just so that they don't have to read all of those "confusing" subtitles and can "better" identify with round-eye gringos (gasp!) but they're just prejudiced against foreign films in general. F#ckers.

For God's sake, just watch the original and skip the remake. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGLKHKwwAiI

And even then, don't expect to be all creeped out. The story's just fair to begin with.