The Eye

Ironically, computer-generated special effects have diminished the fear factor. When you can do anything, as if by magic, ghosts become tricks.

The Pang Brothers have made a movie of such exhilarating imagination that you stop questioning how it's done. There hasn't been anything like this since Ring, although it's closer in spirit to The Others.

Twins Oxide and Danny Pang started out in Hong Kong where shock horror action pictures fed off adrenaline rather than subtlety. They moved to Thailand and made Bangkok Dangerous. Now, they have emerged as filmmakers of dazzling originality.

The concept of The Eye is not new. A 20-year-old girl (Lee Sin-Jie) has a cornea operation after being blind almost all her life. When she begins to see again, there are blurred figures in her line of vision that should not be there.

She must learn what things are, what they look like, because before the recognition of objects had been entirely tactile. It appears that as well as sight, she has received the gift of second sight. Not only does she predict death, but can communicate with dead people.

When she looks in a mirror, she sees the girl from whose eyes the corneas were taken. It is too terrifying to contemplate. She desires the safety of the known dark, but first must discover the truth of the person in the mirror.

The Pangs don't throw ghouls in your face, or water the lawn with blood. They retain a sense of mystery. Adrian Lyne did the same with Jacob's Ladder. When a blind girl sees for the first time, why should the world not be a frightening place? How can she tell that the man in the elevator is not a man at all?

Lee Sin-Jie is sensitive to fear. She carries the audience to the edge of panic. It is a performance that runs like ice over skin. You cannot forget what she has seen.