The Eye!!!
The original Hong Kong-Singaporean version of course, not that unfortunate Jessica Alba remake from a decade ago. Yikes, that was scary BAD!!!
Of course, what’s scary is often about context. When I first tried to watch The EyeI was living alone on my family’s modest lakefront property about 20 miles north of Seattle. It’s the last property on a dead end road, abutting a 40-acre protected wetlands.
I was only a few minutes drive from a suburban Hellscape of Lynnwood(birthplace of Layne Staley!!!) strip malls and cheaply built, poorly designed McMansions, but it felt like I was in the middle of nowhere (it was goat farmsand blue-berry orchards when my grandfather bought it in the 1950s).
Plus, a lot of creepers would stroll through the property at night, looking for meth-fueled orgies in the woods: spooky! Also, the Pacific Northwest has more serial killers per capita than anywhere else in North America: yikes!
It gives off a vibe, yo! All that greenery, gray skies, and bodies of water for dumping bodies.
It was late at night. The rain was falling and the wind was blowing. There was lightning in the distance. Tree branches crashed against the windows. Window shutters flew open then crashed shut. The stairs creaked. Something or someone was tipping things over in the workshop outside! I felt someone watching me from behind - my neck hairs stood on end!
To calm my nerves I cracked and a beer, then put the DVD (yes, you millennials, a DVD!) of The Eye into my DVD player. And I couldn’t watch it. After 15 minutes I was like, “Helllllllll nooooo!”
NO. SPANK. YOU. No spank you!!!
There are ghosts, ghouls, jump-scares, eerie greenish lighting, some dude with half a face, a creep-o in the elevator floating like four inches above the ground, doubts about what is real and what is only in one’s mind.
This is seriously spooky stuff, kids!
When I told my buddies about it months later they teased me without mercy. My friend Ross said there is no such thing as a scary movie - movies didn’t scare him!
So we decided to put a bet on it. We were going to bet a bottle of Balvenie 21-Year Old Portwood Finish if he could watch The Eye and not be frightened unto death.
The agreement was that he would watch the movie alone, at night, with a heart monitor attached. If his heart monitor jumped, it meant he was shocked. He added one caveat though - jump scares didn’t count! I said they had to count. That if he were unaffected the monitor wouldn’t register a jump-scare. He dug his heals in and wouldn’t budge; nor would I. Thus the great contest never occurred, and I still long for that good Scotch!