Horror as a whole tends to move in cycles and jump onto whatever bandwagon is hot at the time, and in the early 2000s, it was remakes of acclaimed Asian horror movies. Between 2002 and 2008 alone we got The Ring, The Grudge, Dark Water, Pulse, Shutter, Mirrors, One Missed Call, and The Eye, with the latter in the midst of a streaming renaissance.
As per FlixPatrol, the Stateside reinvention of the Pang brothers’ original has been scaring its way up the platform’s global rankings, 14 years after being resoundingly panned by critics. A 22 percent Rotten Tomatoes score hardly paints the picture of a must-see terror, even if the user rating is almost doubled at (a still unremarkable) 43 percent.
It did prove plenty profitable, though, bringing in just a shade under $57 million at the box office on a $12 million budget, but it’s more difficult to find a cost-effective horror that doesn’t bomb, given how much audiences love to disregard the critical consensus in the hopes they’ll end up being launched out of their seats in fear by something sinister.
Jessica Alba headlines as a concert violinist who undergoes a double corneal transplant to overcome the blindness she’s been living with for most of her life. Thanks to some pioneering surgery, a helpful doctor, and a kindly sister, she manages to regain her sight. Soon enough, she becomes haunted by visions of a supernatural world lurking just behind her own that only she can see, driving her closer and closer to the brink of madness.
The concept of cursed eyeballs is bizarre enough to work, but not in the hands of The Eye directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud.
Published: Aug 3, 2022 03:27 am