Movie of the week... NOT: The Eye 2

In a very improvised afternoon with Wong, all we really wanted to do was to rent a movie with a quality guarantee. So we got The Eye 2, sequel to the Chinese movie we saw a few months ago. We couldn't have been more wrong.

Beginning of spoiler

The movie is about a young woman, Joey, who has problems with her boyfriend and attempts to kill herself with a meds overdose. Afterwards, she starts seeing weird apparitions. After a month or so, she is notified that she is pregnant, and decides to keep the baby and not tell her ex-boyfriend, who has been avoiding her. The relevant apparition is the one of a woman who committed suicide by throwing herself to the subway tracks. This particular ghost follows her around. After some months of her pregnancy, she sees another woman giving birth in an elevator and sees a spirit trying to get inside her through her wide-open legs. The spirit enters but immediatly comes out, right after which the baby is born dead. She believes that "her" ghost and others are there to kill babies, but she is told otherwise by a sort of priest. He says that for Buddhists there are two moments in which we are in contact with the spiritual world: in a close to death experience, and when giving birth. In the second case, a spirit stands by the mother during her pregnancy hoping to reincarnate in her yet unborn child. And that what she saw before was a failed reincarnation. She then discovers that the ghost that has been willing to reincarnate in her baby, is the late wife of her ex-boyfriend. He'd been cheating on both and when his wife realized, she committed suicide. Joey believes she is part of a vengeance and tries to kill herself, but the ghost won't let her because all she wants is to reincarnate to forget all the pain of her previous life. Joey finally allows her to do so, and has a beautiful baby girl. Tata. The ex-boyfriend issue? Unsolved

End of spoilerIt is actually a technically accomplished movie. The Pang Brothers, directors of both films, take chances on the sequel. The takes are more challenging, the focus is more experimental and the aesthetic is very well exploited. The actress who plays Joey is great. However the story lacks integrity. There are some parts of the film that might only work in Chinese culture because they are taken from local legends and don't keep a close relation with the central story. The plot is mild and with very few tension points (some of them are even misused); as opposed to the first movie which has a complex conflict, a nearly poetic main character, relevant parallel stories and right pace.

I wouldn't recommend it even if you were an Asian films geek like us.