The Eye (2008)

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General		Extras
Category	Horror	Main Menu Audio & Animation Featurette-Birth of the Shadowman Featurette-Becoming Sydney Featurette-Shadow World: Seeing The Dead Featurette-The Eye: An Explosive Finale Deleted Scenes Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	2008
Running Time	92:39
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (48:29)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	David Moreau Xavier Palud
Studio Distributor	Paramount Home Entertainment	Starring	Jessica Alba Alessandro Nivola Parker Posey Rade Serbedzija Fernanda Romero Rachel Ticotin Obba Babatundé
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	?	Music	Marco Beltrami

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes
		Action In or After Credits	No

Sydney Wells (Jessica Alba) is a twenty something concert violinist who has been blind since she was five years old. Driven by her sister's (Parker Posey) guilt for her situation, Sydney gets an eye transplant from an anonymous donor. As she gradually regained the sight in her eyes, becomes clear that she can see more around the than other people. Sydney can see the spirit world, the ghosts of the dead mysterious beings that take them to the afterlife. What's more, she is haunted by a series of horrifying dreams of fire and death. Aided by a psychiatrist (Alessandro Nivola) that she starts to see when she first has trouble coping with her new sight, Sydney tracks down the original owner of her new eyes in a quest for answers.

The Eye is a surprisingly entertaining popcorn thriller. It gets a bit silly at times, though that is hardly a surprise given the high concept premise and the acting chops of Jessica Alba. In her defence, she is actually pretty good in The Eye but this girl isn't going to be winning any serious awards in a hurry (beauty pageants on the other hand...). The movie relies on chills rather than schlock, building tense scenes one after the other instead of just splashing blood and gore all over the place.

The movie is a remake of the Chinese language box-office smash Jian gui, which was directed by cult favourites The Pang Brothers. This version is fairly true to the story of the original, though does a good job of transposing the story to an American setting and incorporating a few of its own twists. Fans of the original are unlikely to be completely disappointed with this version, however they will see a lot of the twists coming.

Video

The film is presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio and is 16x9 enhanced.

The image is razor sharp and features only very minor film grain to give it character. There is an excellent level of detail in the many shadows and dark scenes throughout the movie. There is no sign of low-level noise.

The colour and the film is extremely bold and vivid, but a little bit darker than it should naturally look. Though it took a few minutes from me to adjust my eyes to look of the film, it was quite effective once I had settled in.

There are no signs of compression artefacts or film artefacts in the transfer.

White English subtitles are present for the feature. Based on the portion I sampled appeared to be well timed and accurate to the spoken word.

This is a RSDL disc. The layer break occurs at 48:29 but was not noticeable on my equipment.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

A single English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 Kbps) audio track is present for the film.

The dialogue is clear and easy to understand throughout the film. There do not appear to be any issues with audio/visual synchronisation.

Marco Beltrami provides a fairly effective orchestral score. Whilst it does a good job of highlighting the thrills and chills, it is not particularly memorable.

The film features an excellent sound field throughout, with both the music and environmental effects sitting neatly in all five speakers. The subwoofer is used particularly effectively to amp up the action scenes and build tension in many of the ghost scenes.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Birth of the Shadowman Featurette (1:41)

A short featurette about how the soul reaper "shadowman" character was realised. This looks at both the actor who played the character and his movements as well as the special effects used. Interesting stuff.

Becoming Sydney Featurette (4:50)

Jessica Alba discusses how she prepared for her role. Not really deep and meaningful stuff, but an extra few minutes of looking at Jessica Alba will satisfy a lot of viewers.

Shadow World: Seeing The Dead Featurette (8:34)

A completely preposterous featurette that discusses how were all a little psychic with some quack para-psychologists and tries to justify the plot concept of inheriting some of somebody's memories when inheriting one of their body parts. This feature is unnecessary, but quite entertaining for all the wrong reasons.

The Eye: An Explosive Finale Featurette (6:11)

A short featurette on the production of the film's explosive finale. This featurette covers almost every angle it could and is well worth a look.

Deleted Scenes (11:40)

Eight deleted scenes, each of which change the tone of the film fairly dramatically. It seems that quite a number of cheap schlocky scenes were filmed, complete with blood and goo everywhere, that the editors wisely chose to leave them on the cutting room floor.

Theatrical Trailer (2:02)

A reasonably effective theatrical trailer that quite accurately presents the film as the creepy thriller is that it is.

The Region 1 includes a second disc that includes a digital copy of the film that can be played on computers, as well as a Spanish-language track for the main feature. The Region 1 edition is otherwise identical to the Region 4 edition. The difference will not be worth the hassle of importing for most viewers.

An entertaining popcorn thriller ghost story.

Audio and video are both excellent on this disc. The extras are worth a look, but fairly superficial.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall