An Exercise In Nonsense

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

After the disappointing films of The Eye 2 & The Eye 3, The Child's Eye is a step back to the excellent first film (although not as good) and some of the elements that made The Eye so enjoyable were evident in this fourth installment of the film series. Thankfully, unlike the third film, there's no comedy scenes here...it was back to being serious like the first two movies, and the creep factor also returns and it returns big style.Now, the story for this installment is a pretty strange one, especially for the last 30 minutes or so, but at least it's imaginative. It's not that big on character development, though. I mean, we're given the basics really and that's about it. In fact, we get to know more about the wee dog in the film than we do with some of the main characters, so I guess that aspect of the film is a bit disappointing. In saying that, however, this isn't some sort of boring, deep & meaningful drama. This is Asian horror, and while I'm not saying Asian horror films can't have decent character depth, sometimes you just have to take the film for what it's supposed to be.What really makes this film is the atmosphere, the suspense, and the creepiness, and you can tell that The Pang Brothers went all out to achieve this when watching the film. And they succeed because the tension & uneasiness created through different scenes was nothing short of excellent. This is mainly why I gave it the rating I did, and I know that with such a weak development for the characters in the story, if there was very little in the way of atmosphere then The Child's Eye would have bombed for me.In my opinion, The Child's Eye has been unfairly panned by a lot of critics. Why? Maybe certain people are too used to seeing run-of-the-mill "jump scare" American style horrors where everything is spelled out for them. Who knows, but this is definitely not as bad as some people would have you believe.It's not as good as the first but it's still worth a watch.

Watching a movie (reading a book, attending a concert)in order to review it, is to chose not to be entertained. Surrendering to art, allowing it to sweep you along as it may, is always my plan. But when the down-river flow is so full of rocks as to keep bumping my head, I fell out of this movie and back into my living room going "huh"? I love Asian horror. It has a creepiness unseen elsewhere. This movie did too, but only in atmospherics -- the hotel was a fright! The acting, however, did not add much. It mainly consisted of long, silent pauses where the actors stared at each other, at nothing, at ghosts. And considering the ugliness and horror all about them, the three girls were remarkably unfazed, wandering over and over again back into dark and dreadful places. I might have accepted some of this, if the plot made any sense. Even the amazingly knowledgeable narrative of the Doggy girl, wasn't much help.(It seemed to fall apart in the b/w flashback.) Who was the mother? The wife? The half girl/half dog? How did she get this way What was that crazy hellish world on the other side of the goo? Why did we need so much time dedicated to the riot scene -- it felt like a separate movie. 4 for atmosphere, 10 minus 6 for everything else.

This is the fourth movie in the Pang brothers' The Eye horror series. Of the three previous I've only seen the first, which I recall as an effective and interesting horror movie. This one found its way into my collection as a filler in a movie order of another title, and was the first real made-in-3D movie I watched on my new 3D HDTV. 3D still feels like a mostly unnecessary gimmick to me, and I fail to see how this movie would have been any less effective without the 3D, but disregarding that, the 3D was mostly still quite effective.As for the movie itself, it starts out interestingly enough, and builds up a premise that could have been taken pretty much anywhere. The shock effects are predictable enough, but between the dog child and mysterious shadow woman, and all the strange on-goings with the three men in particular - making the three women the ones who have to drive the story forward - it has many elements that could make for a really good horror story overall. Unfortunately, when it comes time to tie up all the threads, it does so in a somewhat disappointing way. It's still better than most American horror movies I've seen lately.The original The Eye is a better view overall, but you can certainly do worse than this one too.

I was excited to watch this movie for two reasons: 1 - it is a Pang Brother's movie. 2 - it is an Asian horror movie.However, having seen it I set here with a sense of disappointment and that I was somehow cheated out of something.For a Pang Brothers horror movie, "Child's Eye" is fairly disappointing and uneventful. It doesn't quite live up to previous movies such as "Ab-normal Beauty", "Re-Cycle", "The Eye (trilogy)", etc. It has that certain Pang Brothers feeling to it, but it doesn't quite deliver like some of their previous works did. I surely hope that their next project will be more wholeheartedly.The story in "Child's Eye" revolves around an old, run-down hotel in Thailand, where a group of young people from Hong Kong get stranded and are drawn into the dark, sinister story that is tied to the place. Sounds great, yes, but the story turned out to be rather jumpy, confusing and didn't fully have a red line throughout the feature length. Which made the movie somewhat of a pain to sit through.As for the sets and props, well here it is the usual Pang Brother's standard. Lots of really nice sets and decorations. They sure have a good touch for details, and manages to get everything working well together. Despite it being shot in relative dark surroundings, the use of lighting in the movie is really phenomenal. It adds a great sense of dread and mystique to the movie.The cast in "Child's Eye" were good as well. I have watched a lot of Hong Kong movies, and I am fairly unfamiliar with these people. But still, they did a good job with their roles. Most noticeable was Rainie Yang, as she sort of had the lead role, so to speak.Now, one thing puzzles me in the movie, why did everyone speak Cantonese? They were in Thailand. Still the doctor in the hospital was speaking Cantonese. That was just a bit too cheesy. And the scene where they went through the "portal" and came out somewhere else, where you see buildings crumble and such, that was just too much. It looked like something that should have been in an entirely other movie. That was so misplaced in "Child's Eye". Seemed like a chance to just show off some CGI skills."Child's Eye" was a disappointing experience for me. It was a step backwards for the Pang Brothers in my opinion. The story was not well put together and it was too messy. But hey, you can't expect all Asian horror movies to be great, and even great film makers can deliver top quality with every single movie. It is good in a way that they moved away from their usual niche of movies, artistically speaking, but a bold move in a way as well, because the audience might not like the turn of events.This is not a movie that I will be returning to for a second viewing. But hey, if you like Pang Brothers, you should check out "Child's Eye", you might just like it.