Gin gwai
Tags: atmospheric, flashback

Plot synopsis:
Sydney Wells is a successful classical violinist from Los Angeles who has been blind since she was five years old, caused by an accident with firecrackers. Fifteen years later, after celebrating conductor and pianist Simon McCullough's birthday during rehearsal, Sydney undergoes a cornea transplant, which causes her eyesight to return, a bit blurry at first. As time goes on, Sydney's vision begins to clear; however, she also begins experiencing terrifying visions, mostly of fire and of people dying. She also sees people that are already dead, on one occasion when a girl passes right through her. Sydney attempts to unravel the mystery of the visions, and also to convince others, primarily her visual therapist and fellow violinist, Paul Faulkner, who helps her in her quest. She knows that she is not going insane.
Accompanied by Paul, Sydney travels to Mexico, where the cornea donor Ana Cristina Martinez was originally from. She discovers from Ana's mother that the images of fire and death are the result of an industrial accident that Ana foretold. Ana hanged herself because she was unable to stop the accident. Sydney forgives Ana's spirit, who leaves in peace. As Sydney and Paul begin their journey home, they are caught in a traffic congestion caused by a police chase on the other side of the border. Sydney sees the little girl from her vision in the car next to her. She then realizes that this is what her vision has been all along, to save the people that are about to die from an accident.
Still able to see the death silhouettes, Sydney begins to get everyone off the highway, starting with a bus filled with people. She and Paul convince everyone to leave the bus and the cars by telling them that there is a bomb inside the bus. However, a driver leading the police chase rushes through the border barriers and collides into a tank truck, igniting leaking gasoline in the process. Sydney sees the little girl trapped in the car, her mother laying on the ground in front of it, already being hit by a passenger and losing consciousness. Paul breaks open the window and gets the girl out. Paul and Sydney carry the girl and her mother to safety just before the tank truck causes a chain explosion. Sydney is blinded by flying glass fragments in the process.
After recovering at a hospital, she returns to Los Angeles to continue performing as a blind violinist, though with a more optimistic view of her condition.

Review: In an age when American horror flicks are starting to look weary from over-use of CGI special effects or are toned down by self-censorship to reach a wider audience, The Eye comes in as a deftly woven real cardiac-stimulation shocker.
If you like horror movies and want to experiment, this is a good chance, and one of the best in the genre since the little shown Audition earlier this year..
The Eye now finds itself at the top of my list along with the aforementioned as one of the best and creepiest ghost stories of all time.Mun, blind since the age of 2, receives the gift of a cornea transplant at the age of twenty.
When you make comments like that, you really show how ignorant you are when it comes to American cinema, as some of the finest movies ever made came right out of Hollywood, and no they aren't all slasher films or mindless teen comedies.
You get the impression that she could be surrounded by a crowd and still walk alone from one side of a city to the other.The smaller roles are played out very nicely, great acting considering the film concentrates almost solely on the two main characters.The ending is a little bit of a let-down, predictable and not entirely 'working'.
When I finally got around watching it, man was I scared...I'm not going into plot, you can probably read more from other comments and from the web but the effect this movie had on me - I didn't sleep last night.
Directing, shooting, editing, lighting, soundtrack & sound effects (really check these out!) - just simply amazing - Hollywood pay attention !I guess one of the reasons this experience was so eerie was that the spoken language was Chinese, so I understood what was going on because of the subtitles, but the mumblings and other horrible voices were 'not familiar' to me, it made the movie even more scary.
Unfortunately that success comes with a terrifying side-effect; the ability to see unhappy ghosts.Gin Gwai (The Eye) is directed by the Pang brothers Oxide and Danny and stars Angelica Lee (Mun) and Lawrence Chou (Dr.Wah) as the two main principals.No matter what source of reference you use for film reviews, one thing that can be guaranteed as regards Gin Gwai is how divided people are on it.
But the Pang brothers have crafted a thoroughly engrossing, menacing and nerve gnawer of a film, one that delivers chills and scares for the discerning horror sub-genre fan.Here's the crux of the matter with Gin Gwai, it is the opposite side of the Asian horror coin to the likes of the blood letting Audition.
"The Eye"(2002)has to be one of the creepiest horror movies I have seen this year.The "transplant gone awry" concept has been done before-just check out "Body Parts"(1991)or the third story in the horror anthology "Body Bags"(1993),but the Pang Brothers created extremely eerie psychological horror with plenty of genuine scares.Angelica Lee is excellent as a young girl named Mun.Her numerous and extremely creepy encounters with the spirits Mun sees are filled with excellent use of sound.The conclusion is amazing and totally unexpected.The film is very scary and uncanny-it actually reminds me a bit Japanese horror hit "Ringu"(1998).Check it out,if you dare.9 out of 10.The elevator scene blew me away!.
That movie of course, was the Pang Brothers' "The Eye", a film that ended up being something completely different than what I was expecting.In "The Eye", Wong Kar Mun (Lee) is a young blind woman who gets a corneal transplant.
Her doctor, Dr. Lo (a really young looking Edmund Chen) doesn't believe her at first, but then realizes that there may be some merit to her claims, so they go in search of the donor in order to find out what history her eyes' previous owner had, and what kind of baggage Wong Kar Mun has to deal with now.Based on my first impressions of the film, I was actually expecting a big scare fest like "The Grudge"; short on story, big on scares.
Being a fan of Japanese horror, as well as the foreign film scene as a whole (and by foreign I mean non-Hollywood), I was excited at the prospect of seeing this movie.
During the latter half of the film, the focus turns from the slow horror to a plot that most of us have seen before, and we are dealt a final sequence that seems unconnected and distant from the rest of the movie.
A blind woman gets an eye transplants with some very undesired side effects in this creepy little Ping Thai film.
Angelica Lee is superb as Mun, the blind girl who now sees dead people (Renée Zellweger will simply pale in comparison when the inevitable Hollywood remake arrives), the tale moves at a brisk pace, and it makes for very good viewing on one of the late nights in October.
An excellent horror film, The Eye quickly develops a chilling atmosphere, creating a constant sense of dread and fear that just doesn't let up.
The music score was excellent adding to what was already a creepy atmosphere; the story was intriguing and well written; and the cinematography was well executed, bringing us some great shots especially during the more creepier scenes.Speaking of creepy scenes, The Eye has some of the best I've seen in a horror movie for quite a while, and I think the only recent movies to match atmosphere and true tension for me was Sinister, Insidious, and As Above, So Below.
I defy anyone to watch those scenes and not feel at least a little uneasy.CGI is usually very minimal in Asian horrors, and it's no different in The Eye with the majority of the SFX coming in the last few scenes of the movie.
There are the odd moments CGI used for the scarier scenes, but they're really used as "touch up" techniques, so it's not as if this is a CGI-fest, which is good as practical effects can actually be scarier if done right, which they are here.I honestly can't speak highly enough for this film, and if you enjoy Asian horror, like the films I mentioned earlier, then you (should) enjoy The Eye.Definitely recommended..
I have not caught a lot of Asian horror, because I'm not big on ghosts(and they are; their films about them are, thankfully, sophisticated and not crude, the way the mainstream Western ones tend to be), and, well, there are cultural differences, and I find that it distracts me from taking in the picture.
Starring the beautiful Angelica Lee as a blind girl - Mun - who undergoes a cornea transplant and begins to have terrifying visions while her doctor tries to help.I didn't find this particularly scary and there are but a few jump out of your seat moments.
There aren't many twists here, as this movie really plays by the rules of Asian horror, with the exception of the ending, which I really liked.This movie gets extra creepy points for a certain scene in a train and also because of recent news about people who have undergone transplants and seemingly acquiring some of the donors' personality traits.
Perhaps the difference is a cultural one, although the film does suggest that Asian cultures are much more adept at dealing with death than those cultures in the West.When protagonist Mun's neighbor continually asks for his report card, or even eats the ceremonial candles that his family has burned in his memory, it comes off less haunting and more like the actions of a goofy middle schooler, as does the strange tongue flicking of a woman who comes back to haunt her husband's food stand.And the ending seems extremely contrived, bearing more than a passing resemblance to the conclusion of "The Mothman Prophecies.
This is not to say the film isn't influenced by Japanese horror films - it certainly is, along with U.S. films like, most notably the Sixth Sense, but let's all pay attention to little details like where the movie is from.The eye starts out really well.
There is one point of the movie where one character makes statements about the after-life in a way that he seems to be talking about universal truths that can be found on any medical compendium.The artsy camera-work has no real purpose many times and the thrills are cheap as in a bad Hollywood horror picture.
To See Or Not To See. The plot of this film is that a blind woman received an eye transplant but she recovers with the ability to see spirits.I liked that this is a subtle horror movie.
Blessed with the gift of sight after a successful corneal transplant operation, a blind girl gradually realises that her new eyes also allow her to see the wandering, lost souls of dead people in this Hong Kong horror movie.
If you're a thinking person's horror fan, you'll like it.Gorgeous and talented Wong Kar Mun plays Lee, a young sight impaired Woman given the opportunity by her doctor to receive a cornea transplant.
The Pang Bros (directors of this film) are really talented at building this sort of unique tension.Her doctor (Edmund Chen) is skeptical, but attempts to ease her stress by helping Lee search for the identity of the eye donor which compounds the dramatic tension toward an excellent ending.This is a great horror film.
The Eye is actually a creepy and unnerving horror film that bathes in simplicity and routine narrative but gets across its chills and scares in an extremely effective manner; mostly down to the fact we know exactly what's what and what's going on.
The other scene takes place at some sort of drawing class: a ghost appears and states the heroine is sitting in 'her chair' before it unexpectedly lunges at her, causing the girl to get up in freight but her reaction at this point is still confusion.Two things spawn from these scenes: I said 'unexpectedly lunges' because you do not expect ghosts to be as aggressive as this; harking back to two of the more memorable ghost stories put to film 'The Shining' and 'The Sixth Sense' (which this is loosely based on); even they did not have their ghosts as aggressive as this: approaching and seemingly attacking the heroes.
I just want to be an ordinary person." The movie is amazingly effective, from the scene in the diner we see she is not the only person gifted with this second sight, or "sixth sense", and that gives us the ability to place the story in a subtext within reality.
Than i found some positive comments about the movie in the reviews corner, and was quiet intrigued 2 watch it before the remake, got a copy after some findings.well 2 be honestly speaking it was a bit let down 2 me, although acting and direction of the movie was quiet impressive keeping in mind that being a Hong Kong based film, but the story at the end was a big let down 2 me, i have expected some depth in the end or half part of the move and off course would have expected more horror because its a Drama + Horror move.
She gets the supernatural power once possessed through the eyes of her donor; the ability to see future deaths as well as the already deceased.This movie does indeed borrow slightly from the premise of "The Sixth Sense" but it is done so in a way that works and makes the story all it's own.
Angelica Lee gives a great performance in this suspense thriller about a blind girl who gets an eye transplant and starts seeing strange apparitions.In an attempt to discover what is happening, she travels with her therapist to Thailand to seek information on the donor.
On the weaker side I think the pace of the film is a little too slow, there could've been more work on the characters, and the story recycle a lot of things from other scary movies.
The Eye however, is something of an exercise in frustration, and does not quite the classic status that many reviewers credit it with.The first half of the film is immensely enjoyable and offers some genuine and effective scares, truly creepy atmospheres and some grim visuals that stay with you long after the movie slides, disappointingly, into a pedestrian and totally tame and fright free 'detective' story, where our heroine must discover why she sees the things she does.This The Eye does this about 50% way through the film, and whilst the remainder is still watchable, it seems to sit awkwardly with the first half, mainly because the heroine of the piece seems to overcome her terror at a time where she (apparently) stops seeing ghosts.
What we are left with are various scare-free exposition scenes and an explosive and unlikely ending that wouldn't be out of place in any Hollowood blockbuster.The Eye is still a cut above most other horror films out there, and is an must have for any self respecting fan of the genre.
Among the many refreshing novelties that this new wave of Asian horror has brought, Pang brother's film "Gin gwai" ("The Eye") is not only one of the best but also one of the most accessible to Western culture.
The brothers Oxide and Danny Pang show a lot of promise, as "Gin gwai" seems to be only the top of the iceberg.The story begins with Wong Kar Mun (Angelica Lee) receiving a cornea transplant, finally recovering her sight after losing it when she was only 2 years old.
This may feel slow to those expecting a scare-fest, but it's actually quite effective for the kind of story the Pang are telling.This focus on mystery gives "The Eye" a feeling that makes it different from other modern Asian horrors, as the film doesn't relay too much on special effects or jump scares to deliver the chills.
The Eye is a class film, as with any horror it's best watched at night, in the dark, on your own.
It's much better than the Grudge, and far scarier than the sixth sense, the first time you watch is the best as it relies on the shocks so not sure it's worth buying unless you've got money to spare so renting is a good idea, but this is one film that is well worth watching..
when the movie ends, the main character is at peace with the lost of her gift.there are a bunch of great horror and mystery films coming out of Asia, esp.
The Eye is a good but not brilliant Hong Kong/Thai addition to Asian horror genre, obviously being influenced by the American film "The sixth sense" & the golden age of Japanese horror of the past 8 or so years.Personally my personal biggest downer of "The Eye" is the ridiculous love story subplot between Mun & Dr Wah. Out of nowhere the good doctor decides to throw medical ethics out the window & declare he's in love (for no real apparent reason...
I did something I have rarely done before with this film - I read a vague review on IMDb (I believe it said "If you liked Ju-On, you'll love The Eye") and bought it, sight unseen, along with a couple of "horror" type movies.The "horror" type movies turned out to be pornography (I now have a better understanding of the Asian movie rating system), but this movie exceeded my expectations.The directors did a phenomenal job mixing suspense and just a touch of horror into a story that should be about something wonderful - a blind woman regaining her sight.
Jian Gui (The Eye) is a good genuinely scary movie that shares some similar ideas with the 6th Sense.
It is the story of a young blind woman who receives a corneal transplant and is given the power of sight only to be seeing more than she bargained for.As with many Asian horror films I love the subtly in the early stages that slowly builds to a screaming finish.
Though i do not think The Eye was the Most scary movie of all time it was fun to watch with Cheap Thrills and something not obvious like Hollywood Cheap Thrills are.Some ideas in the movie to scare you were Brilliant or just plain weird.The story twists and turns and to me will always be better then 6th sense because i feel the story is more Solid in this film and doesn't really rely on the impact of the ending to make it an good film.9/10Fun Horror movie to watch with friends, Family, or by yourself.Do not worry about gore if thats what your worried about this movie hardly has any..
Before it's over, Mun will have more in common with that spirit than we realized.'The Eye' seems to be cribbing a lot of its creepy effects from past horror shows, but what movie doesn't do that?
I was never so scared ever since I watched FRIDAY THE 13th PART 6 as a kid (Not a good start, right?)A nice way to describe this supernatural thriller is RING meets THE SIXTH SENSE meets BODY PARTS meets THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES meets GHOST.
The Eye is a genuinely creepy horror flick, which reminded of 'Ring' in the way it engulfs its audience with a sense of dread, slowly building to a compelling climax.A young woman undergoes an operation which gives her sight, for the first time in years.
It makes me wonder just why our Asian cousins are so competent at making excellent horror movies, when Hollywood has little or no idea when it comes to understanding how to shock and scare an audience.Highly recommended - don't be put off by the subtitles, you soon get used to them (very quickly actually) and then the film takes over.
"The Eye" is a good horror movie.