I grew up during the J-horror craze
Ringu
Ju-On
Kairo
They were my childhood
A very scary and disturbing childhood
Many of you probably share my experience
Even in the west
You still get to experience them through Hollywood remakes
Except, one is not like the others
The Eye was actually a Chinese horror
A Hong Kong-Singaporean production, to be exact
While heavily inspired by the aesthetics of J-horror
The Eye is fundamentally a Chinese story
Reflecting on traditional Chinese superstitions
The morality
And the philosophy
So today, we are going to examine this film
By comparing and contrasting it with J-horror
As well as other Chinese horror films
To see the differences and similarities
Let's get spooky
Shall we?
The Eye is a 2002 Hong Kong-Singaporean horror
The Chinese title is...
While it literally means "Seeing Ghost"
It's really more of an idiom that refers to the ability to see ghost
Like the Sixth Sense
Or the event of being haunted by a ghost
The story revolves around Mun
A young woman who's blinded since age 2
But, she receives a cornea transplant at the start of the film
Restoring her eyesight
That, however, also brings a curse
She can not only see the normal world
She can see ghosts
With this ability
She sees the ghost of her young friend
Moments before said friend dies from cancer and leaves this world
Witnessing the lingering ghosts of a mother and child
Who try to talk to the husband to no avail
For as long as horror cinema has existed
The potential to be killed
Is used as an element to incite fear in the hearts of audience
There's the process of killing, as seen in Ju-On
And there's the anxiety of going to die, as seen in Ringu
But in The Eye
There is no killing
For the majority of the film
Mun is a witness
With no threat of dying
The true horror, as she comes to understand
Is the depression that are associated with death
Ingrained in Chinese Buddist culture
Is the concept of death as part of the natural process of life
And that death is not a moment in time
But a continuation of life
There is a certain formality surrounding death in Chinese culture
Proper burial ground is important
And affects the fortune of future generations
Treatments of the dead demand kindness and respect
Failure to do so may bring misfortune
Anger the spirits
Or, if you are in a zombie film
Awaken the dead
In Chinese religion
The dead are never truly dead
Their humanities don't leave them after they die
This is why ghosts in The Eye is much more lucid
Than the angry spirits from the J-horror classics
Souls who are content simply move on to their next life
Thus, the only ghosts you see
Are the ones that are still clinging to their regrets
Unable to move on from their love ones
This is where the horror came from
The depression
It is terrifying
It is sorrowful
Another notable haunting in this film
Comes from the ghost of a school kid
Who, in each encounter
Always asks
"Have you seen my report card?"
Later, it is revealed that
His parents was accusing him of throwing away his report card
In a bad attempt at hiding his bad grade from them
Their distrusts got to him
And in a feat of anger and frustration
He jumped out the window
While I wouldn't necessarily call the parents evil
It is fairly clear that the livings were the ones in the wrong
It is a theme as old as time
The evils of men outweighs the evils of monsters
As seen in horror classics such as Frankenstein
While in contemporary J-horror
The cursed ghosts are also created but the evils of humans
It does not change the fact that the spirits have lost their humanity
And are just an evil forces that
Murders indiscriminately
That's not how ghosts in Chinese story works
In the Chinese Taoist belief
There is white in the black
And black in the white
Nothing is truly so absolute
In Legend of the White Serpent, for example
The titular white serpent disguises as a human woman
And is living happily with her human husband
When a monk pays them a visit
He finds out the true identity of the white serpent
The misguided monk believes that all monsters are malicious
So he seals her away
Tearing apart an innocent family
Humans are capable of just as much cruelty, if not more
With that in mind
It should not come as a surprise that
The ghost-seeing curse came from a woman who has the same ability
Because of her ability
This woman had been bullied by other villagers her entire life
Which, causes her to commit suicide
Her mother, although supportive for her entire life
Is unable to accept the fact that her daughter chooses death over her
The resentment she feels
Makes her daughter's soul unable to move on
It is as the movie "A Chinese Ghost Story" says:
"Human can be scarier than ghosts"
Without spoiling too much
Let's just say that
At the end of the film
Just as Mun comes to term with her new found abilities
She lost her eyesight in an accident
Blinded once more
It may seem ironic
But as the the ending monologue hints at
"I'll never ask why I'm blind again"
Mun comes out of the event
More content and happier than before
With the film putting the emphasis on a certain...
Enlightenment
To understand the significance of the ending
We must first discuss the two hauntings that
No doubt, many of you have noticed the similarities between
"Suicide souls relive their pain everyday"
The school boy who lost his report card
And the main curse from the village girl
In both cases, they were bullied into committing suicide
And their souls linger in this world
Reliving the trauma over and over
On the surface
It seems to be just a version of the limbo
But it's a bit more than that
Reoccuring tragedy is also a common trope in Chinese horror stories
In 1999's anthology film: The Mirror
Four separate stories are told
All of them end in horrific murders
With eerie similarities
On the surface
It seems like the mirror is cursed to causes all these horrific killings
But really
It is fairly obvious that all of the horror are caused by human greed
"Conscience worths nothing"
And the mirror merely reveals the monsters inside us
Yes, "Humans are scarier than monsters"
And, when watching this film
The feeling of "things are doomed to repeat" is always present
Much the same way as the ghosts in The Eye
This concept of fated to suffer endlessly
Is core to Buddhism
To oversimplify things
It was said that before Buddha achieved nirvana
He realized that the process of birth, aging, sickness and death
Is an unavoidable process of suffering
And the thing that keeps us there, is our desire for everything
Thus, the goal of Buddhism is to free oneself from the vicious cycle of reincarnation
Free from the endless cycle of birth and suffering
It is because of this
We have films like The Mirror
Where the greatest horror is not hell or limbo
But adrift endlessly in this cycle fuelled by greed
And it is why in The Eye
Mun looses her eyes at the end
It is to signify to the audience that
She is free from her own cycle of desire
It is not that being blind is better for her
But rather, blinded or sighted makes no difference to her now
The Eye left behind quite a legacy
Lead Actress Angelica Lee received both the Hong Kong Film Award
And Taiwan Golden Horse Award for her performance
Essentially the Oscar of the two respective regions
It spawned two sequels
As well as an American remake
Outside of Asian, however
The film, while critically praised
Doesn't get much recognition beyond just another solid but derivative film
Which is a shame
Because underneath it's seemingly derivative exterior
There are a lot of clever ideas
Inspired by the unique culture of East and SouthEast Asia
Just the idea of horror coming not from Death
But the depression of seeing death
Is something that I don't think I have seen from any other movie
So this Halloween
If you want to see something familiar yet fresh
Or if you are an aspiring horror writer
I have just the film for you