| Rating: | ★★★★★ |
| Category: | Movies |
| Genre: | Horror |
It is, in fact, so rare that a sequel is better than the original that it deserves a special pat on the back for the filmmakers who managed it.
So here goes:
The Eye 2. (Jian Gui 2.)
Go see it.
NOW.
In case you didn't see it, The Eye was a decent, though low-budget, Cantonese movie by the Pang brothers, who apparently are a kind of reverse clone of the Wachowski brothers. (You know the Wachowskis: they made one of the all-time good S/F action movies, The Matrix, and followed it with two horrifying and insipid sequels.) The Pangs, on the other hand, created a good-side-of-mediocre original, and followed it up with a sequel that is absolutely stellar.
The Eye is sort of like an Asian version of The Dead Zone, a film based on Stephen King's novel about a guy who can foresee people's lives following a terrible accident. In The Eye, Wong Kar Mun has a corneal transplant which goes really well until she starts to have visions of catastrophes, visions of the dead, and generally starts seeing all kinds of really wacky crap that makes her very nervous. The film follows her quest to find the donor of her eye, and find out why she's seeing all this weird stuff.
Ok. Now that I've told you all that, disregard it entirely; the sequel has nothing whatsoever to do with any of it.
Instead, it focuses on a beautiful young woman who is pregnant by her married lover, who suddenly begins to be haunted by the ghost of another woman who is determined that she stay pregnant - for reasons that, when they become clear, will severely disturb you, to say the least. (Follow all that? Good.)
One of the things I respect the most about the Pang brothers as filmmakers is the fact that they don't flinch from their own storylines. Too often directors shy away from showing the things that happen in their storylines directly. Now, this can work, when used as a technique; take a look at Yee Do Hung Gaan (Inner Senses) sometime. There is in that movie an absolutely horrifying scene involving a high school girl and a pair of pruning shears, that is absolutely guaranteed to make even the toughest audience hide their eyes and curse, despite the fact that the filmmakers never actually show you anything. However, too often in movies it is not a technique, but rather a lack of grit (and maybe a fear of directorial typecasting) that makes the director avoid showing the consequences of storyline events.
A good example that is almost always seen in movies is when a character falls off of something high; how many times do you recall seeing someone fall and be followed by the cameras ALMOST all the way to the ground, only to then cut away from the actual impact at the last second? The frequently used shot of "the gory remains" later on is merely a cop-out; the real horror is in the impact itself. A dead body is just a dead body, however messy. The moment that sends chills up and down your back is the moment that someone's life is actually snuffed out, not the later examination of their now-vacant body. Autopsies may be disgusting, and frequently repulsive, but they're almost never horrifying.
The Pang brothers, on the other hand, flinch from nothing, and when their character hurls herself off a roof not once but TWICE, they follow her all the way down both times. It is absolutely guaranteed to make you bite through your lower lip, especially after the first time, as you watch her drag herself up the stairs to try again.
However, as horrifying as this movie can sometimes be, there's another factor at work here. The Pang brothers are not only unflinching when it comes to horror; they are equally unsparing of hope, and ultimately that's how this movie plays out.
Have you ever watched all the way through a movie, and then in the last few seconds, turned to your neighbor at the movie and said "Now if _I_ was writing this, here's what _I_ would do...?" I bet you have. Everyone has at least once in a while. But how often do filmmakers actually end things that way? Not very, huh? Usually, at the last second, where they might cross the line from "decent" to "brilliant," they back off, step away from the risky choice, and retreat into the safety of established theatrical formulas. This is not one of those films.
Rarely in cinema do I experience a moment like the one at the end of The Eye 2, when I unpaused my DVD and watched the very scene I had just finished describing to my wife unfold before me. This movie is a fantastic cinematic experience, and although not for the theatrically faint-of-heart, it is well worth the effort required to find it on DVD. I was able to get it at my local video store, but then, I've had good luck with them lately. (It may have something to do with the amount of time I spend pestering them to get more foreign films, and Canada doesn't count.)
I will add one qualifier to my description of this film, however; do yourself the favor of steeling yourself for the subtitles, and watch this movie in the original Cantonese. The original voice acting is incredible, but the English dub isn't that great. It's not TERRIBLE, mind you, like that of some well-known films I could name, but any letdown diminishes the impact of this film, which deserves better. Watched in its original, compelling Cantonese, with fine acting by Shu Qi, Eugenia Yuan, Philip Kwok, and Rayson Tan, this is one of the best movies I've seen all year.
Granted, this is hardly surprising, considering the astonishing lack of anything approaching good movies this year from Hollywood, but still.
