General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

My Left Eye Sees Ghosts (我左眼见到鬼)

My Left Eye Sees Ghosts (我左眼见到鬼) is a 2002 Hong Kong comedy film directed by Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai, in which a young widow gains the ability to see ghosts through her left eye after a car accident and befriends the ghost of a former elementary school classmate.¹ It stars Sammi Cheng as the widow May Ho and Lau Ching-wan as the ghost, and it was produced by the duo's company Milkyway Image.² Despite its ghost-film trappings, the film is a romantic comedy rather than a horror picture, and it became one of the top Hong Kong box-office earners of 2002.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Original title	我左眼见到鬼 (Cantonese: Ngo joh ngan gin do gwai)⁵
Directors	Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai, for Milkyway Image¹^•²
Release	13 July 2002, Hong Kong⁶
Runtime	98 minutes, in Cantonese¹
Box office	HK$30 million, which ranked fourth among local films in the Hong Kong market that year⁴^•¹²
Awards	Nominated for Golden Horse Best Actress (Sammi Cheng) and Best Original Film Song ("Oi Seung Yut Gor Yan", performed by Cheng)³
Writers	Wai Ka-fai, Yau Nai-hoi, and Au Kin-yee⁷

Spoilers

Plot

May Ho (Sammi Cheng) is a wealthy but grieving widow. While abroad she met Daniel, a Stanford-educated luxury fashion executive, married him in a whirlwind romance, and lost him seven days into the marriage when he drowned in a scuba-diving accident during a Caribbean getaway.⁸ She inherits his fortune, faces public suspicion that she loved his money rather than the man, and copes through shopping, smoking, and drinking.⁹

After the death of Daniel's golden retriever Whisky finally breaks her composure, she drunkenly crashes her car.⁸ Recovering from the accident, she finds that her left eye sees ghosts, and the first spirit she encounters is Ken (Lau Ching-wan), a former elementary school classmate who died in his teens and now attaches himself to her as a mischievous protector.¹⁰^•² May hopes Ken can help her see her dead husband one more time, but his presence turns out not to be accidental, and the film's late revelations reframe the relationship between the two.⁹

Production and context

The film came from Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai, who co-founded Milkyway Image in 1996 and by 2000 to 2003 were co-directing commercially successful comedies with Sammi Cheng, including Needing You (2000) and Love on a Diet (2001).¹^•⁹ To had transformed Cheng from a Cantopop singer into a leading screen comedian in those films and in Wu Yen (2001), and My Left Eye Sees Ghosts continued that formula, using a ghost story as the vehicle for a romantic comedy with a fast-paced narrative and biting dialogue.⁴

The ghost-seeing premise placed the film in a crowded moment in Hong Kong cinema. After the commercial success of the Pang Brothers' horror film The Eye earlier in 2002, ghost-seeing became a popular subject for local filmmakers, with Sleeping with the Dead, Visible Secret 2, and this film all built around a character who can see spirits.¹⁰ Scholars have also grouped it with films that use the association of eyes with second sight, and it has been cited as a Hong Kong horror pastiche within the theme of accursed sight in Asian horror.¹¹

Cast and performances

The supporting cast includes Cherrie Ying, Lee San-san, Simon Yam, Lam Suet, Bonnie Wong, Wong Tin-lam, and Kelly Lin in a cameo.³ Lau Ching-wan, usually known for tough-guy and dramatic roles, plays the ghost as goofy and childlike, shedding his usual screen persona; one reviewer described the character as a ghost with a thirteen-year-old boy's intelligence.¹^•¹⁰

The film is widely described as carried by Sammi Cheng. The lovehkfilm review notes that she carries the film from start to finish, which was new for her, since she normally had a strong male co-star sharing the load, and that she shows a larger dramatic range than in previous roles while keeping her usual physical comedy.³ Her performance earned a Golden Horse Award nomination for Best Actress, and the theme song "Oi Seung Yut Gor Yan", performed by Cheng, was nominated for Best Original Film Song.³

Reception

The film was a commercial success, taking HK$30 million in a weak Hong Kong market, the year's top earner according to a Taipei Times report in December 2002.⁴ Critics were generally warm about the film's tone while noting its unevenness. The lovehkfilm review called it a funny and affecting comedy despite jerky pacing and occasional histrionics, and suggested that a second viewing improves it, because knowing the characters' final situations makes their earlier actions more deeply felt.³ The Cinespot review, rating it 6 out of 10, argued that To and Wai's approach to comedy needed refinement but called the ending touching and passionate.¹⁰ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a Tomatometer score of 76% from one reviewed critic, with audience ratings above 2,500.⁷ IMDb users give it 6.7 out of 10 from about 1,500 votes.⁵

The film has retained a place in To's repertory screenings. The Museum of Modern Art screened it in 2024 in 35mm as part of the series "Chaos and Order: The Way of Johnnie To", describing it as a rom-com/horror mashup in which To and Wai go full-blown screwball, and the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute has also screened it.¹^•⁹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Horror films (individual works) › Comedy horror films › 2000s and 2010s comedy horror films

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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