 Sammi Cheng said this was her first horror film, but her definition of horror would have to be "supernatural romance." It's a great film, occasionally eerie, more often endearing, but not horrific.
My Left Eye Sees Ghosts brings to mind Demi Moore & Patrick Swayze in Ghost, which I liked, but My Left Eye Sees Ghosts is better, partly because Sammi Cheng is a better & sexier performer than Demi Moore by a long shot, but also because My Left Eye doesn't descend as deeply into sentimental twaddle & has a much better story to tell.
A brilliant script inspired several fine performances, with the two leads standing out. Lan Ching Wen as the primary ghost is a combination of hip & nurdy, & above all loveable in his desire to be a super-hero spook saving the living from the soul-snatchers. Sammi Cheng creates a complex character, a widow grieving deeply for a husband to whom she was married for only one week, but pretending to the world Ýto be a heartless golddigger who only wanted the man's money anyway.
 Surviving a suicidal "accident," Sammi discovers she can see ghosts with her left eye. Some of them want her help, others want to cause harm, & one of them is a young man who claims to have died performing a really nifty practical joke, & was a school chum of the widow.
It's her relationship with Wen's wannabe superhero-ghost that gives her a reason to continue in life, but having a best friend nobody else can see doesn't make her exactly outgoing, & she remains a strange figure at the fringe of her husband's family & Hong Kong society. The continuing tragedy for her is that of all the ghosts she encounters, her husband Danny is never one of them, & she worries he, like everyone else, believes she married him for his money, thinks she does not grieve for him, & so will not appear to her.
To say more gives away too much of a good plot, but this film manages to be lighthearted without being trivial. Director Johnny To has made several excellent films, but nothing like this that I've seen. He's generally a Hong Kong action director, but this is a ghostly tale of human loss & the rediscovery of life. It's sometimes laugh out loud funny, but never so that the characters become cartoons instead of easy to care about.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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