Saturday, February 2, 2008

The Eye: Bruja !

The film features Jessica Alba(Sydney Wells), Alessandro Nivola(Dr.Paul Faulkner), Parker Posey(Helen Wells), Rade Serbedzija(Simon McCullough), Fernanda Romero(Ana Christina Martinez),Rachel Ticotin(Rosa Martinez),Obba Babatunde(Dr.Haskins). David Moreu, Xavier Palud directed, Sebastian Gutierrez wrote, Paula Wagner, and Don Granger produced the film. The film is based on the Honk Kong film Gin Gwai, released in 2002(IMDb). Rated PG-13.

Sydney Wells became blind as a child while she and her sister were playing with a firecracker. As an adult, Sydney had a corneal transplant which helped her regain her sense of sight. Shortly after her bandages were removed, Sydney's blurred vision managed to detect an amorphous dark figure in the corner of the room, and being that she could not see well, she disregarded the figure. Well after the surgery, Sydney began seeing more dark figures along with what she believed to be the souls of the deceased. Being curious about her condition, Sydney began searching for her donor alongside the reluctant and and cynical Dr.Paul Faulkner.

There were plenty of scenes in this film that caused the audience to scream and jump out of their seats.The element of suspense was well wrought, and admittedly there were some scenes that gave me chills. The tone of the film was adequate considering the objective of the film was not to produce a horror thriller that was centered around gore, but centered around a woman's quest to live a normal life as she deals with an unexpected, and unwanted ability to see the deceased.

Understanding the source of the ability was the principal aim of Alba's character, and ultimately the film is about saving lives rather solving the mystery of the death of one life or lives as commonly found in most horror films that involves hauntings of some measure.

Common special effects were used in this film, involving distortion, and frightful sound effects in the screams of the dark figures. Although the special effects were common, they were effective to a respectable extent.

Jessica Alba was very believable as a blind person, and unlike her character in Awake, she played a gentle, compassionate,and amicable character. Alba seemed at ease playing this role, and she did not overact the blind role by gazing aimlessly, but it also helped that she was not blind for most of the movie, but visually impaired. The pace of the film certainly kept the film interesting, and the script was not spectacular, but it was adequate and suited the film well, but I opine, the best part of the film was the ending. Stay tuned to Movieporium.blogspot.com.

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