This movie is available for purchase at www.sensasian.com

Rating:

5

AKA: The Eye - Infinity

Year of release: 2005

Genre: horror

Director: Pang Brothers

Producers: Eric Tsang, Peter Ho, Lawrence Cheng, Jojo Hui

Writer: Mark Wu

Editor: Curran Pang

Cinematographer: Decha Srimantra

Music: Payont Permsith

Stars: Berlin Chen, Isabella Leung, Kate Yeung, Kris Gu, Ray MacDonald, Bongkoth Kongmalai

Rated IIB for violence and disturbing imagery

DVD Information

Company: Mega Star

Format: widescreen

Languages: Cantonese, Mandarin

Subtitles: Chinese, English

Extras: trailers, photo gallery, data bank, making-of featurette

Notes: A solid DVD; the sound mix is especially done well, and this is one of the few HK DVDs that has the extras subtitled in English.

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The Eye 10

No, you haven't stepped into some sort of time warp. The Eye 10 is actually the third installment in the series; the "10" in the title refers to the number of ways to conjure up ghosts as referenced by a book some bored teenagers use one spooky night in Thailand. Of course, kids shouldn't play around with dead things, and a way to kill time ends up seemingly killing one of the group. Even after the friends go back to Hong Kong, spirits continue to follow them, so they decide to go back to Thailand to enlist the aid of a ghost-busting granny (who is surprisingly not played by Helena Law Lan) to get rid of the curse once and for all.

I enjoyed the first two Eye movies, but The Eye 10 falls flat. The inventiveness of the previous entries is replaced by a stereotypical Hong Kong ghost movie, complete with amateurish acting, a near-incomprensible plot and some very lame attempts at comedy (including a dire sequence where some homeboys have a "dance-off" with a possesed kid). Danny and Oxide Pang's output has been pretty solid so far, but The Eye 10 marks a step backwards. In all seriousness, you could switch this film with Troublesome Night 20 (or whatever number they're on now with that tired series) and you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Still, I was willing to forgive The Eye 10 a bit. Even if it does seem like the Pang borthers have gone to the well one too many times with this picture, the film still looks very nice, there is still a creepy tone in parts and there are a few jolts as well (though this time out, they're more of the cheap scare variety). Over the past year, both Danny and Oxide Pang seemed to want to branch out a bit from the "ghost" genre with Leave Me Alone and Ab-Normal Beauty, and they had some success. Hopefully, they will continue down that path, rather than cranking out yet another "I see dead people" movie just to pay the bills.