Gin gwai (The Eye)

With the remake starring Jessica Alba opening tomorrow, and I do hope to go if I'm not under twenty feet of friggin' snow, I figured a rewatch of the Pang bothers original was in order. The Pang brothers...you most likely know them from their recent success with THE MESSENGERS but they've been spooking Asian film goers for years now and it was GIN GWAI that broke them into the mainstream. It's a simple story with a blind girl getting new corneas and all of a sudden seeing a bunch of dead people. Actually, it's far deeper in that she has no reference points to understand even the mundane things she is now seeing and she gets the heave ho from her all-blind orchestra to boot making GIN GWAI a complex examination of disocvery and alienation all at the same time which makes it perfect for the teen market. No doubt these subtleties will be lost in the Americanized version but here they ring clear. A smart, tight, sharply presented piece of fright which manages to scare the shit out of you without resorting to the gore fest. Not one to watch alone!