Then I realized that unlike most features Alba's been in, where she's primarily an ensemble player, this is her first true legitimate role where she's the singular star of the picture, with all the focus on her...and with other actors of inferior cali-ber set around her(with the exception of a too-short appear-ance by Rachel Ticotin), it's easy to mistake her bad acting as good acting in comparison.

     Yes, Jessica Alba still sucks...and so does The Eye, the latest Americanized remake of an Asian(in this case Hong Kong) horror film.

     Why haven't we gotten tired of these yet? When will Holly-wood stop pumping out watered-and-dumbed-down remakes of superior Asian horror? How many more twists can there possibly be on the Dead Restless Spirit Haunts A Nubile Young Woman With Terrifying Consequences schtick? What-ever twists may be left, it seems The Eye attempts to exploit them all, and strikes not only the bottom of the barrel, but cracks through to the dirt underneath, all while achieving nothing during the run of its tween-friendly PG-13 unspooling.

     The story starts off interestingly enough, with a group of Spanish children throwing rocks at a house and yelling "bruja!"("witch") at a young woman who appears to flee from them in fear. She runs to her basement and seems ready to hang herself, but hesitates. It is then that a demonic spirit-form surges toward her, and startles her into kicking over the chair on which she's standing, and the hanging is thus assured. We then go to Los Angeles, where violinist Sydney Wells is about to undergo corneal surgery to replace her damaged eyes, which were rendered useless when she was five years old. The surgery is performed, and Sydney at first sees blurry images, but gradually regains her full sight. Once she does, though, she quickly becomes aware that all is not right; at first she begins having strange and fearful dreams that shock her awake at 1:06am every night...then in her waking hours, she begins to see people around her that she comes to realize are not alive.

     Sydney turns to a specialist, Dr. Paul Faulkner(Alessandro Nivola), who was originally recommended by the surgeon who restored her sight, for the purpose of helping her adjust to being able to see. Faulkner's precise field of expertise is never named, and so we'll just have to assume he's a Doctor Who Helps One Get To Know The World Better. Hell of a job, dragging Sydney around town for what seems like only a couple of hours, trying to explain everything there is to see all around you 24-7! At first Faulkner seems to be a kind, consi-derate professional...but as soon as Sydney confides in what she's been seeing, he immediately turns into Baron Von Jack-ass!

     Not only does Faulkner adamantly and unflinchingly refute Sydney's claims of seeing otherworldly things, he actually ridi-cules her at one point with a sneer on his face by asking if she "sees dead people". Is this some type of new "tough love" treatment for distraught patients? Does Sydney belong to a low-level HMO rather than possessing the more respected Blue Cross, and is thus subject to a type of medical snobbery from Baron Von Jackass? It doesn't matter, because it seems Sydney has surrounded herself with people who care less about her now that she can see, than they did when she was blind. From her orchestra's music conductor(Shooter's Rade Serbedzija), who huffingly tells Sydney to "get a grip" when she freaks out upon seeing an angered spirit lunge at her in a coffee shop, to her own sister Helen(Parker Posey), who rolls her eyes after witnessing an exchange between an Asian woman whose son has died(Babylon 5's Tamlyn Tomita, mak-ing the least she can out of less than ten words of dialogue), and can somehow tell that Sydney can see him standing behind her, Sydney has clearly chosen a clique of buttheads as confidantes!

     Perhaps realizing what assholes she's associating with, Sydney sets out on her own to find out what's happening to her...and discovers she might be experiencing Cellular Mem-ory, a condition where organ transplant receivers undergo behavioral changes more akin to the dead people from whom the organs were harvested. Now, here's the major problem with the premise of the story(and believe me, there are more to choose from than I can list here): Cellular Memory isn't considered to be a true condition by the medical community. It's a pseudoscience at best, with no empirical evidence that any such thing ever happens to organ receivers...unlike the more likely prospect of anesthesia awareness, a gimmick used in the film Awake. Like that other Jessica Alba flop, The Eye tries to put forth Cellular Memory as a factual occurence, and thus lays its foundations on shaky ground indeed.

     Eventually, Baron Von Jackass has a completely unbeliev-able change of heart and, putting his own medical license at risk, finds out who Sydney's donor was. It turns out it was a young Mexican woman named Ana(Fernanda Romero), who had the ability to see the spirit world, and would thus be able to predict death before it happened. People in her small village were highly superstitious, and regarded Ana as a bruja--a witch. After a particularly horrible factory accident where dozens were killed--after disregarding warnings from Ana--the townspeople turned on her, blaming her for the dis-aster, and drove Ana to finally take her own life. There is an amazingly contrived moment where Faulkner must leave Syd-ney alone in the house where Ana killed herself, and in the best traditions of ripping off The Ring, Sydney comes to find out exactly what happened. On the way back to the States, Sydney comes to realize exactly what the visions she's been seeing mean, and why she was always awakened at 1:06 in the morning. While the majority of the film had thus far been pretty faithful to the original Chinese version(in tone if not execution), this last part differs wildly...and rather than give us an ending that is both terrifying and ironic, we are spoon fed the typical Hollywood besieged-heroine-turns-the-tables-on-evil gruel. Sadly, the film ends much as it began...with a narra-tion by Sydney about her and Ana's "abilities" being a bless-ing and a curse. That's funny...Alba pretty much doesn't look anything like Tobey Maguire, and I was unaware Spider-Man had returned to theaters.

     Fortunately for moviegoers everywhere, Jessica Alba is now pregnant...and this is definitely a blessing, since it means she won't be able to make any movies for a while. Now, if only science could figure out a way to keep her pregnant 24-7 forever...