By Joe McCabe
Jessica Alba?s latest project is a perfect example of why opposites attract?and FEARnet got firsthand proof, when we visited the actress and sex symbol on the set of the upcoming remake of Chinese horror favorite The Eye.

The star stunner has paired on the project with French filmmakers David Moreau and Xavier Palud. ?Who?? you ask. Ah, good question. Their names aren?t exactly familiar to U.S. audiences, but the two are responsible for the most efficient little fright film this journo?s seen in years. It?s called IIs, a tale about a young couple who find their home invaded, and themselves terrorized, by shadowy figures in the middle of the night. That?s pretty much the whole plot, but the directors managed to squeeze more genuine?and genuinely unique?scares out of their first feature than armies of their western counterparts have with higher-budgeted horrors; primarily by resisting the urge to show their invaders on screen.

So what brings Alba to work with Moreau and Palud? After all, the actress didn?t become famous for not showing things, in countless magazine photo-shoots. But she?s also made no attempt to hide her dissatisfaction in recent months with being known primarily as a cover girl. And when we meet her it?s immediately clear she?s looking to change all that with The Eye. While her directors are looking to create a U.S. film with a U.S.-sized budget. Their collaboration, they hope, will be like that of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers?they?ll give her class, she?ll give them sex appeal.

?I was looking to do a movie in this genre for a while,? Alba tells us during a break in her last week of LA location shooting. ?I don?t know?I think, just with the following of Dark Angel and Fantastic Four, the comic book fans and stuff, I appreciate cult fans. Cult movie fans, and people who like specific genres, [more so] than people who are just told to go to a movie because they have a character in their McDonald?s bag or whatever. You know what I mean? People who really seek out a specific genre. And I wanted to do something that was classy, that transcended the genre, hopefully. I know that that?s what [David and Xavier] want to do?they want to make this more than just a horror movie that people take their girlfriend to. It?s really gonna look beautiful and be different and more of a psychological thriller, along with it being a horror movie. You really go into the character?s head and you live with the character from the very beginning of the movie to the very end of the movie. There?s just not a lot of movies that star women that are smart, and really tell the story through their eyes.?

As in the original version of The Eye, Alba?s lead character is a blind musician whose sight is restored via transplant surgery. But she soon learns that the people she sees with her new eyes may not be the living. She describes the role as ?absolutely? one of the most challenging she?s ever taken.

?I?ve had to learn how to play violin,? she laughs, ?and I?ve spent a lot of time with people who are blind and have had to learn how to adjust and live as someone who isn?t sighted. There?s a lot of anxiety that goes along with that? Then, also, trying to play a classical violinist is pretty much impossible. And [Xavier] has me playing Beethoven and Mozart. It?s not simple, like ?Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star?. It?s really complicated, beautiful music.?

Moreau and Palud have also faced challenges, and made sacrifices?not the least of which was turning down the opportunity to direct a remake of Wes Craven?s Last House of the Left.

?Our first feature film in France,? explains Palud (the more outspoken of the two directors), ?was really, really about the unseen, and never seeing what?s outside the door, just working more on what people can imagine than showing. Last House was a great subject, but it was really violent. It has to be violent. And we tried to work on this one, to make it a little less violent. Because we are more interested in playing with the nerve than in shocking the audience. So when we found this project? The Eye was about a girl, this girl regaining her eyesight and just figuring out what?s real and what?s not?is she seeing a ghost or not? It was more interesting to us in the way we wanted to play with scares. More scary, less shocking.?

Palud says he admires Asian horror films for their reluctance to provide cheap scares. ?They are efficient when you?re looking at them, the way they are made there. Because?there is less score, they?re working a lot on the sound; it?s just another way to tell the story. All of these American movies are showing, showing, showing, and overscoring, all the time, telling you what to think and how to feel at this moment of the story. And here, when you look at A Tale of Two Sisters, for example, and all these movies where you just have very locked-up shots, not cut like hell every two seconds, it?s just a different way to tell the story. Then after, when you make them here, you just make them look American. So you kind of lose your sense of why they were good. I?m not going to give examples, but in the United States, they are attracted by something, and then when they make the movie here they?re trying to make it the same as the one before. It?s a hard fight.?

As far as adapting The Eye for western audiences, Palud claims his film?s script takes a slightly different approach to the subject of spirits.

?The only problem we faced from the beginning,? he says, ?was that all these Asian ghost stories are really stuck in their culture, and we don?t have the same culture. Which means we don?t live with ghosts like they live with ghosts. So the challenge was to make it less of a ghost story. We decided in working on the script with Sebastian [Gutierrez], and the way we are telling the story today, to be more into our heads, and to be using the fact that by regaining her eyesight?not knowing how to see and seeing stuff?we can really play more with what?s inside her head. Instead of saying, ?It?s obviously a ghost she?s seeing??is it a ghost? Maybe. Is it something real? Maybe. Is she becoming crazy?

?So all of the rewriting, and all the ways we wanted to tell the story, was just more about ?What does she have inside her head?? There won?t be obvious ghosts, the way we want to tell the story. It?s going to be about figuring out if she?s insane or not.?

With other horror filmmakers?like The Hills Have Eyes? remake?s Alexandre Aja?emerging from France, I ask Palud and Moreau if they feel there?s a unique sensibility the French bring to horror.

?It?s everybody I think,? shrugs Palud. ?In France we love genre movies. French cinema deviates?big comedies or very auteur-driven movies are very low budget. It?s very difficult to make genre in France, but I think that there are a lot of directors who love the genre, and we have very few who have the chance to be produced in France. And all the movies which are produced which are genre movies have one-million dollar budgets, or sometimes two. We wanted to do these kinds of movies since we were little, and we feel like we have to put everything in the first one. Sometimes all of these European, and especially French movies, are about throwing up everything the first time, and sometimes it may be too reverential. It?s very difficult to make those kinds of movies. Our movie was the only one for seven years that actually really worked, and so now you have more horror movies that are going to be done. But it?s very tough.?

Moreau, the quiet half of the team, suddenly chimes in: ?It?s difficult to make a horror movie in France, because it?s difficult to believe a horror story in France. Because our country is so small. In the U.S.A. you can believe in everything! So maybe that?s the reason why our horror movies in France are not so good.?

Alba?s directors are clearly big horror fans, but does the actress herself have a favorite fright film?

She flashes me the smile that?s sold a million magazines. ?I was told to say to say IIs.?

Her directors laugh. ?No,? she adds, ?it actually is really good!?