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The Eye
File:Poster theeye.jpgPromotional poster for The Eye
Directed by	David Moreau Xavier Palud
Written by	Original Screenplay: Jo Jo Yuet-chun Hui The Pang Brothers Screenplay: Sebastian Gutierrez
Produced by	Peter Chan Tom Cruise
Starring	Jessica Alba Parker Posey Alessandro Nivola Chloe Moretz
Music by	Marco Beltrami
Distributed by	Lionsgate Paramount Vantage
Release dates	February 1, 2008
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$12 million
Box office	$14,890,681

The Eye is a 2008 film starring Jessica Alba. It is a remake of The Eye, a 2002 Hong Kong-Singaporean-Thai film. The film was rated PG-13 by the MPAA for "violence/terror and disturbing content."

Plot

Sydney Wells, at the start of the film, is a successful classical violinist, although blind since the age of 5. She and her sister had been playing with firecrackers and they had been set off too close to her face, damaging her corneas.

Now, nearly 20 years later, Sydney undergoes a cornea transplant which causes her vision, albeit blurry, to begin returning. At first, she is confused and disoriented, unable to understand if what she sees is "real" or not. During her first night with her new eyes, her bedmate at the hospital dies, and Sydney, not understanding, watches her blurry figure being led away by someone else. During her stay, she also befriends a young girl named Alicia, who is there undergoing surgery for a brain tumor.

As time goes on, Sydney's vision begins to clear up and she struggles to understand the new world around her. Her therapist, Paul Faulkner, feels that her strange visions are her mind's way of interpreting what it was never able to before: including visions of fire, death, and the number '106'. Her bedroom walls keep changing to stone and back again, and she sees what appears to be the ghosts of people around her, including a young woman who walks right through her in the street just before she sees her body lying on the ground.

When a Chinese diner suddenly explodes around her, she finds herself in the charred remains. She learns that the accident that burned the diner down occurred weeks prior, revealing that her visions are of the past. Fleeing back to her apartment, she viciously smashes every light source and covers her windows (and eyes). Days later, her therapist forces his way in and removes her blinds, telling her to return to the real world.

Upon discovering that the face that appears in the mirror is not her own (which she finds out through photographs of her in the past), she becomes desperate to figure out who and what is sending her these visions. She begs Paul for help and finally convinces him to drive her to Mexico (at the risk of losing his medical license), in order to find out what happened to her donor, Ana Cristina Martinez.

They go to Ana Christina's house where they meet her mother,who's face looks slightly deformed.Sydney then sees a shadow behind Ana Christina's mother just as she has a heart attack.As Paul takes her to the hospital,Sydney goes into Ana Christina's room and sees more images.It turns out that young girl had committed suicide after failing to stop a factory fire that killed many of the people in the village and severely injured her own mother. After the fire, the deeply superstitious villagers, who had seen her crying outside the homes of people who were to die, believe she caused the disaster, and drive her to hang herself , calling her a witch and throwing stones at her.

Sydney and Paul return to the US to discover the border is closed due to a high-speed chase on the other side. Dozens of vehicles are left stranded behind the closed gates. In the middle of the group of cars is a gas tanker with the number "106" on the front and a camper with a young girl in it. Sydney puts the pieces together and realizes the images she kept seeing - the number 106, the bells, and the girl trapped in a fire - weren't of the past, but of the future. She rushes out of the car, screaming at everyone to flee, telling them a bomb is on the bus. The people listen and flee, just as a car smashes through the barriers and collides with the gas truck. The tanker explodes, completely destroying every vehicle in a chain-reaction down the highway.

Small shards of glass from the explosion destroy Sydney's new corneas, a price she feels was small to pay in order to save the lives of everyone on the highway.

Cast

• Jessica Alba as Sydney Wells
• Alessandro Nivola as Dr. Paul Faulkner
• Parker Posey as Helen Wells
• Chloe Grace Moretz as Alicia Milstone
• Tamlyn Tomita as Mrs. Cheung
• Fernanda Romero as Ana Cristina Martinez
• Landall Goolsby as Alex
• Rade Serbedzija as Simon McCullough
• Kevin Pham as Ghost Boy

Production

Remake rights to the Pang Brothers' original 2002 Hong Kong film, The Eye, were purchased by Cruise/Wagner Productions, and their remake follows Naina, a Hindi movie released in 2005, that is also based on the Pang Brothers' film.

Location shooting

Exteriors were shot primarily in the Downtown, Los Angeles area. The establishing hospital exterior shots - wherein Sydney is supposed to have had her sight-restoring surgery - are of LAC/USC Medical Center in the Boyle Heights district; 3/4 shots looking north- and southeast of the main 18-floor-high central building (the same bldg. used for the television soap-opera General Hospital). Fictionally, the burned-out Chinese restaurant is supposed to be located just three-blocks from where Sydney lives; the exterior scene, in which Sydney is about to get into a taxicab and travel to Mexico, was filmed on 7th Street, just east of Figueroa, in the downtown area.

Themes

Using the pretext of a psychological thriller and paranormal experiences, the film explores mental illness, and in particular, of the monothematic delusion known as Mirrored self-misidentification, referred to in the story as cellular memory.

Other themes include the concept of precognition, or premonition, perhaps becoming a popular cultural crossover from Asian beliefs about the unknown- since this film was a remake of a Hong Kong horror flick, and still retains Asian themes in the 2008 version.

The story of this American version borrows narrative elements, consciously or not, from previous thrillers The Beast with Five Fingers a film about a deadly human body-part transplant (a hand); Audrey Rose (film), which features a child trapped in a burning automobile; and The Mothman Prophecies (film), in which the prognosticated, climactic bridge collapse that threatens to take many human lives.

Critical reception

The film received generally negative reviews from critics. As of February 3, 2008, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 25% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 28 reviews.

Box office performance

The film opened in second place at the box office with $13 million, recovering its $12 million budget.

As of February 8, 2008, the film has a domestic total gross of $14,890,681.

References

1. http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/movie/2757-eye
2. "The Eye - Movie Reviews, Trailers, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2008-02-02.
3. The Eye (2008), Box Office Mojo. Accessed February 7, 2008.

External links

• Stream HD Trailer
• Official site
• The Eye at IMDb
• The Eye at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Eye at Metacritic
• The Eye at Box Office Mojo
• Template:Amg movie
• Jessica Alba comments on The Eye
• Review
• The Eye Review

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