Just as the Screamadelic self-referential horror was petering out, freaky Oriental chicks with needles and wicked curses from beyond the grave gave the genre a much-needed shot in the arm.
Well, that, dear reader, was then. In the intervening years, the tropes that once scared the living snot out of us, have been copied, chewed up and spat out by any number of dire Hollywood remakes (The Ring 2, anyone?), parodies (Scary Movie) and misguided facsimiles (‘Shrooms).
We had little cause to hope for The Eye based, as it is, on a later, unlovely Japanese chiller. Genre watchers will know the drill. Having lost her sight in a childhood accident, Ms. Alba receives a cornea transplant only to discover that with her new lamps, she can – altogether now – See Dead People. Assisted by her sceptical yet dishy doctor (Nivola), our heroine’s sixth sense sets her off on a Mexican murder mystery to determine who killed the original owner of her optics.
It ought to be hokum and it certainly is. The denouement requires Ms. Alba to perform feats of super-heroism that would seem implausible were she to perform them as part of her Fantastic Four duties.
Yet somehow, the Hollywood version functions with far more aplomb than the material on which it is based. It helps that David Moreau and Xavier Palud, the talented duo-encephalitic entity behind last year’s splendid Them, know how to make you jump out of your seat. These astute French gentlemen wisely ditch the long-haired banshees and jump cut lurches that are, like, so 2001, to fashion a proper ghost story.
It may not be The Innocents but it’s no One Missed Call either. Phew.

[98mins. Cert 15A]