The Eye

Concert violinist Sydney Wells (Alba) desperately hopes seeing is not believing after she gets her sight back thanks to a pair of new corneas.

Rather than relish the chance to vividly clock the vibrant world around her, she finds herself plunged into a wince-inducing parallel dimension you'd really rather not lay eyes on. She starts seeing things - and not in a nice way.

There's cadaverous ghouls summoning the dead, the ghosts of car crash victims drifting through her and - heart-stoppingly - a Madonna crone clone lunging at her while she's having a cuppa.

To compound Sydney's visionary hell, no-one - including dishy neural specialist Dr Faulkner (Nivola) - believes a word she says, putting it down to her racing mind adjusting to the fresh gift of vision.

Directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud - the team behind the excellent French thriller Them - have done a blinking good job of adapting the Pang Brothers' original Asian thriller from 2002.

A sure-footed storyline is neatly punctuated by jolting shocks to the senses: there's some nasty deaths heads regularly hoving into view.

Rather than making a spectacle of herself (think Good Luck Chuck), Alba - dowdied down with a brunette barnet - is better than you might expect as the musician subjected to vision excess.

She's pretty convincing for an actress better known for her pert curves in Fantastic Four and Sin City although hot-fisted male teens will be pleased to see she still manages to squeeze into some unfeasibly tight jeans.

While not quite out of sight this nevertheless sees off most of the opposition...which is more than you can say for many remakes.

Tim Evans