"The Eye" tells the story of Sydney Wells (Jessica Alba), a concert violinist who's been blind since the age of 5 due to a firecracker-related accident involving her still guilt-ridden sister Helen (Parker Posey), and who is about to undergo corneal transplant surgery. After the surgery, Sydney is referred to Dr. Paul Faulkner (Alessandro Nivola), a specialist who's job it is to help her transition to the world of the seeing. As Sydney begins to recuperate, she starts seeing shadowy figures, frightening images of fires, and other unexplainable and scary visions which cause her to fear for her sanity and wonder if she's imagining these things, if they are somehow caused by her brain's adjustment to sight, or worse, if they are real. Of course, she shares what's happening with the skeptical Dr. Faulkner, who isn't sure what to believe. After a startling discovery, Sydney becomes convinced that the visions are caused by "cellular memory," a theory that all living tissues can remember and hence transfer energy and information from the donor to the recipient, and she decides to search for the truth about her donor in hopes of finding an answer to what's happening to her.If you're not a big fan of horror movies (which I'm not--I'm a bit of a chicken) then this is the movie for you, because the scares were minimal. It had a couple scenes were I jumped in my seat, but I think I was more startled than frightened. Jessica Alba was beautiful as always and she did a fair job at the "oh woe is me" damsel in distress bit. Not a ton of chemistry between her and Nivola, but then again it was a horror movie not a romance. I wouldn't rush out to rent this movie, but keep it on your list or to borrow a Netflix term "queue" for when what you really want to see isn't in.
