After the disappointing films of The Eye 2 & The Eye 3, The Child's Eye is a step back to the excellent first film (although not as good) and some of the elements that made The Eye so enjoyable were evident in this fourth installment of the film series. Thankfully, unlike the third film, there's no comedy scenes here...it was back to being serious like the first two movies, and the creep factor also returns and it returns big style.
Now, the story for this installment is a pretty strange one, especially for the last 30 minutes or so, but at least it's imaginative. It's not that big on character development, though. I mean, we're given the basics really and that's about it. In fact, we get to know more about the wee dog in the film than we do with some of the main characters, so I guess that aspect of the film is a bit disappointing. In saying that, however, this isn't some sort of boring, deep & meaningful drama. This is Asian horror, and while I'm not saying Asian horror films can't have decent character depth, sometimes you just have to take the film for what it's supposed to be.
What really makes this film is the atmosphere, the suspense, and the creepiness, and you can tell that The Pang Brothers went all out to achieve this when watching the film. And they succeed because the tension & uneasiness created through different scenes was nothing short of excellent. This is mainly why I gave it the rating I did, and I know that with such a weak development for the characters in the story, if there was very little in the way of atmosphere then The Child's Eye would have bombed for me.
In my opinion, The Child's Eye has been unfairly panned by a lot of critics. Why? Maybe certain people are too used to seeing run-of-the-mill "jump scare" American style horrors where everything is spelled out for them. Who knows, but this is definitely not as bad as some people would have you believe.
It's not as good as the first but it's still worth a watch.
Now, the story for this installment is a pretty strange one, especially for the last 30 minutes or so, but at least it's imaginative. It's not that big on character development, though. I mean, we're given the basics really and that's about it. In fact, we get to know more about the wee dog in the film than we do with some of the main characters, so I guess that aspect of the film is a bit disappointing. In saying that, however, this isn't some sort of boring, deep & meaningful drama. This is Asian horror, and while I'm not saying Asian horror films can't have decent character depth, sometimes you just have to take the film for what it's supposed to be.
What really makes this film is the atmosphere, the suspense, and the creepiness, and you can tell that The Pang Brothers went all out to achieve this when watching the film. And they succeed because the tension & uneasiness created through different scenes was nothing short of excellent. This is mainly why I gave it the rating I did, and I know that with such a weak development for the characters in the story, if there was very little in the way of atmosphere then The Child's Eye would have bombed for me.
In my opinion, The Child's Eye has been unfairly panned by a lot of critics. Why? Maybe certain people are too used to seeing run-of-the-mill "jump scare" American style horrors where everything is spelled out for them. Who knows, but this is definitely not as bad as some people would have you believe.
It's not as good as the first but it's still worth a watch.