The Eye (filem 2002)

Jalan cerita

Blind since the age of two, 20-year-old Hong Kong classical violinist Mun undergoes an eye cornea transplant after receiving a pair of new eyes from a donor. Initially, she is glad to have her sense of sight restored but becomes troubled when she starts seeing mysterious figures that seem to foretell gruesome deaths. The night before her discharge from hospital, she sees a shadowy figure accompanying a patient out of the room and the next morning the patient is pronounced dead.
Mun goes to see her doctor's nephew, Dr Wah, a psychologist, about the strange entities that she has been seeing with her new eyes. He is skeptical at first, but as he gradually develops a closer relationship with her, he decides to accompany her on a trip to northern Thailand to find Ling, the eye donor. When they ask a village doctor about Ling and her family, he is unwilling to reveal anything but becomes more co-operative when Mun tells him that she sees what Ling used to see. Apparently, Ling has a psychic ability due to her eyes, that allows her to foresee death and disaster. However, her fellow villagers misunderstood her as a jinx and refused to trust her. Once, Ling tried to warn the people about an imminent disaster but they drove her away and her vision came true. She felt guilty for the deaths and hanged herself. Ling's mother is both depressed and angry with her daughter and has never forgiven Ling for committing suicide, until one night Ling's spirit possesses Mun and attempts suicide. Ling's mother saves Mun and breaks down, saying that she has forgiven Ling and Ling's spirit leaves in peace.
On the return journey, their bus is caught in a traffic jam and Mun sees hundreds of ghostly figures lumbering on the road. Believing that a catastrophe is approaching, she runs out of the bus and tries to warn everyone to leave, but no one understands her and thinks that she is insane. In fact, the traffic jam is due to a tank truck that has toppled over and is blocking the road. The truck starts leaking natural gas but nobody notices it. A driver restarts his engine and ignites the gas, causing a chain explosion. Just then, Dr Wah saves Mun from death by shielding her with his body, but Mun is already blinded by glass fragments. In the epilogue of the film, a blind Mun is seen roaming the streets of Hong Kong. Although she has lost her sense of sight, she is happy that she now has the support and friendship of Dr Wah.

Pengeluaran

The Eye is a co-production of MediaCorp Raintree Pictures in Singapore and Applause Pictures of Hong Kong, and was shot in Hong Kong and Thailand with a pan-Asian cast and crew, including Malaysian actress Angelica Lee, Chinese-Canadian singer Lawrence Chou, Singaporean singer-actor Pierre Png and Thai actress Chutcha Rujinanon. The crew included Thai cinematographer Decha Seementa and the Thai music collective Orange Music provided the score.
Danny and Oxide Pang said they were inspired to write the screenplay for The Eye by a report they had seen in a Hong Kong newspaper 13 years before, about a 16-year-old girl who had received a corneal transplant and committed suicide soon after.
"We'd always wondered what the girl saw when she regained her eyesight finally and what actually made her want to end her life", Oxide said in an interview.
It is worth mentioning that a similar movie was planned by Alfred Hitchcock many years ago, as referenced in Patrick McGilligan's Biography, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light. (as well as others). The movie was about a blind pianist and Alfred Hitchcock had hoped to get James Stewart to play the part. The pianist undergoes a breakthrough eye transplant surgery and sees images and things that the donor once saw, including a murder.

Penerimaan kritikal

The film received generally favorable reviews from critics in North America. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 69% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 91 reviews. On Metacritic, the film received an average score of 66 out of 100, based on 26 reviews.