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Dom Robinson reviews
Tartan Video
- Cert:
- Cat.no: TVD 3539
- Running time: 95 minutes
- Year: 2004
- Pressing: 2005
- Region(s): 0, PAL
- Chapters: 16 plus extras
- Sound: DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Surround
- Languages: Cantonese
- Subtitles: English
- Widescreen: 1.85:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: No
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Trailer, Making Of, Asia Extreme Trailer Reel
Director:
- Oxide and Danny Pang
(Abnormal Beauty, Bangkok Dangerous, Bangkok Haunted, The Eye, The Eye 2, The Eye 10, The Messengers, One Take Only, The Tesseract, Who Is Running?)
Producers:
- Peter Chan, Jo Jo Yuet-chun Hui,Nonzee Nimibutr and Lawrence Cheng
Screenplay:
- Jo Jo Yuet-chun Hui and Lawrence Cheng
Original Score :
- Orange Music
Cast :
- Joey Cheng: Qi Shu
Sam: Jesdaporn Pholdee
Yuen Chi-Kei: Eugenia Yuan
Monk: Philip Kwok
Policewoman: May Phua
Gynaecologist: Rayson Tan
Policeman: Alan Tern
Policeman 2: San Yow
Joey (Qi Shu, right) is a very disturbed young woman.
She’s on permanent self-destruct because she can’t handle rejection. As things stand when we first seeher, she’s about to commit suicide one more time in a bid to be successful, but thankfully fails (andthe resultant stomach-pumping scene is pretty gross). What makes things worse for her, in her currentplight, is that she’s pregnant and the father of the child, her ex-boyfriend, doesn’t want to knowabout her although what will be going through his mind once he does know the facts isn’t something Iwould want to spoil in this review.
The Eye 2 is obviously the sequel toThe Eye,but the two stories are entirely separate. However, the prospect of seeing ghosts is the recurringtheme and there’s plenty on view here, the first ones appearing as Joey wakes in her hotel room fromher first suicide attempt. It makes you wonder whether she’s mentally unstable or are the ghosts,in fact, for real, as she is moved to another room in the hotel and goes to check out why, findingsome kind of exorcism ritual being performed to cleanse the room, as she hides further down thecorridor. When she asks a cleaner what’s happening, she’s told how the ghosts come when someone triesto kill themselves… but you’ll see there’s more to it than that.
As she goes about her life in the months from conception to giving birth, there’s many a moment whereshe’s desperately trying to help people or, at least, point them in the right direction, given theinfo she’s learned from a Buddhist monk and her bid to understand what’s going on, but to the laymanit just comes across as if she’s totally lost the plot, so she’s on a loser from the start but there’salways hope things will come good in the end.
It’s difficult to expand on the film further without giving spoilers, but thanks to the tight directionand exceptional acting from Qi Shu, The Eye 2 is absolutely fucking mind-blowing stuff. Afteryou’ve watched this, with all its clever and simple visuals mixed with phenomenal sound FX, you’ll mostlikely be a similar bag of nerves to Joey by the end of the movie.
It’s worth 10/10 because it really delivers on its scares, it fully qualifies the reasons given foreverything that happens and it completely avoids the trap some films could suffer of being given acop-out ending and transcending that to give it the perfect ending it needs. Outstanding!
And after watching this, I see the Pang brothers have made a third film, The Eye 10. I wantit out on DVD now!
The Pang brothers make full use of the entire 1.85:1 widescreen frame, causing even a drab hospitalto look like something you can’t take your eyes off as you never know where the next shock couldcome from. The print is superb and is flawless.
Full credit goes to the soundmix as, unlike the first film which just had a Dolby Surround track, herewe’re treated to both a Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 soundtrack. I always go for the latter when giventhe option and you’ll experience incredible split-surround effects and heavy bass for the oodles ofscary moments which are delivered with a genuine feel – something that so rarely comes out of modern-dayfilmmaking. Let’s just hope Hollywood doesn’t try and remake THIS series and then fuck it up likethey routinely do!
The only disappointment comes in the scant extras. The Behind The Scenes Documentary (14 mins)has interview snippets with the two director – the Pang Brothers, its lead and other crew members tellingof how some of the ideas in the film came about. Interesting stuff, but something that you’ll only watch once.There’s also a Trailer (3 mins), but don’t, whatever you do, watch the trailer before the filmitself otherwise you’ll spoil so many surprises as it really contains far too much that should be leftfor you to see later.
Aside from that there’s just trailers for other Asia Extreme titles from Tartan – Battle Royale 2,Internal Affairs 1, 2 & 3, Sky Blue, Oldboy and Freezer.
There are subtitles in English only (except for on the odd occasion when English is actually spoken duringthe film – which I found a bit disconcerting as I wasn’t expecting it), plus the option to remove themwhich is good as a video would have to have them burned into the print, just 16 chapters, and a shortpiece of the music and CGI on the main menu, exhibiting something similar to what Joey sees at some pointin the movie.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.