Interview with Jassica Alba....

Although she can be seen most recently in the medical thriller "Awake," Jessica Alba said that there is little comparison between that movie and her upcoming horror film, "The Eye."" 'Awake' was more of a psychological thriller about someone who is dealing with a surgery and trust," she said. "['The Eye'] is about a girl who has a cornea transplant and takes on the psychic abilities of the donor and starts to see death before it happens.""The Eye," directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud, is an American remake of the Chinese horror film "Gin gwai." The story is focused on Sydney Wells, a blind woman who can finally see after undergoing an operation. But in the process of gaining sight, Wells starts to see a death figure snatching away the living, throwing her into a world of confusion and fear.

"She doesn't understand because she's literally seeing for the first time, and now she's seeing horrible things," Alba said.Although this American remake is based on a foreign template, Alba said that the editor turned to classic American horror flicks for inspiration, citing "The Haunting" and "The Changeling" as well as "Jacob's Ladder" and "The Shining" as reference points. Alba is no stranger to horror films, naming "Psycho," "The Birds" and "Nightmare on Elm Street" as some of her favorites."I think everyone tried to infuse as much of those films as possible," she said, noting that the American version of the film is "more of a ghost story than it is a gore fest.""[The concept of ghosts] is more part of the [Eastern] culture," she said. "They just have a different mentality about it. In Western culture, people think you're absolutely nuts if you believe in ghosts or see ghosts. So we dealt with ghosts in this film similarly."In preparing for her role as the optically-cursed Wells, Alba fully dedicated herself to understanding what it is like to be visually impaired by visiting blind orientation centers in Los Angeles and New Mexico.

She learned how to read Braille, practiced walking with a cane and put labels on every item in her home. Alba also spent time with a blind girl who has not been able to see since she was 2 years old.But even with all of her intensive research, Alba felt that it still differed from the actual experience while filming. "To be honest, it was quite claustrophobic when I started," Alba said. "I felt confined and sort of trapped. I had a few freak-outs. It took a while for me to get used to it.""The Eye" is based on the idea of cellular memory, a concept that purports that organ recipients adopt the characteristics of their donors. The idea may be a bit far-fetched, but Alba believes it has some merit. "It's scientifically proven," she said. "I actually met a guy this week who hated pasta, and after his liver transplant all he wants to eat, three nights a week, is pasta. He lost thirty pounds and didn't like going to theme parks, ever, and now he and his wife go on vacation and go on scary roller coasters. He found out that his donor was a 16-year-old boy who loved roller coasters and didn't like sweets." Although "The Eye" has its roots foreign cinema, Alba claims that her version has its own identity. "The Hong Kong version was more bitter than sweet in the end, and ours was definitely bittersweet," she said. "On the other hand, people didn't think [the main character] was so nuts, and some people were on her side. In our version, absolutely no one believed her, and they thought she'd lost it. We're really playing up the insanity."