The curse of seeing dead people? The curse of the sequels more like!…
Once again, UK DVD distributor Tartan have retitled a film for UK release (something they have a habit of doing lately). Perhaps they didn’t want the British audience to get confused, in case we had all ended up looking for volumes three to nine first? Anyway, the original title The Eye 10 actually refers to the 10 ways you can see dead people. So considering the first two got a whole film each, that means we going to need to rattle through the rest in order to fit them all in. You may well wish they’d stopped at two…!
While visiting their friend in Thailand, four teenagers decide to tell each other ghost stories to kill time. When their friend shows them an old book that claims to hold the secrets to seeing the dead, they decide to play a game following its instructions.
It seems that you’d better be careful what you do in Thailand, as a whole multitude of seemingly innocuous pastimes may bring on a bit of ghostly sightseeing. Tapping a bowl, combing your hair at midnight, even bending over and looking between your knees. But when one of their number goes missing while playing hide and seek at night with a black cat (admittedly one of the less likely diversions) the fun abruptly comes to an end.
Two of the group head back to Hong Kong in an attempt to put the experience behind them, but can they really escape their fate? (What do you think?)
Ah, teenagers - they never learn, do they? Messing around with the forces of evil for a laugh. Sadly, for once an Asian film has followed the American trend for filling their films with dim, attractive juveniles.
Ditching the impressive, creepy atmosphere of the first two films, the Pang Brothers return with a sequel that falls foul of the law of diminishing returns. Deciding this time to play the film more as a comedy, they effectively undermine any chance of real scares.
Did they intend a laugh-out-loud comedy, or perhaps real scares mixed with real silliness, like Evil Dead 2? Sadly, the film achieves neither - even when the film lampoons the original films, or when one of the group ends up possessed in a ‘break-dance face-off’ in a tenement corridor. (Yes, there’s even a lift scene - the seeming requirement of the trilogy!)
Creatively, it’s hard to see what the Pang Brothers were thinking - apart from perhaps ‘Show me the money’? The direction is fine, performances okay, but lacks the intelligence behind their other films. Even the effects for this film look ropey. Did they find themselves a couple of weeks spare and decide to bang this out?
Hell, we know what these boys can do when they put their mind to it, so it’s hard not to be very disappointed. Okay, so it’s by no means terrible - not in comparison with other filmmakers. It is, however, a shame this bears their name, so let’s hope Re-Cycle delivers. (We’ll be bringing you the low down on that soon…)
DVD details
Distributor: Tartan Asia Extreme (UK)
The UK DVD will come with a few extras, mainly a making of documentary and trailer. It will also be released as part of a box set with the first two films.
