The first production from World Wrestling Entertainment is a horror flick starring WWE superstar Kane (or so they tell me). They say that wrestling is all acting, but I think that somebody might need some classes for the big screen.
Years before, Officer Frank Williams (Steven Vidler) and his partner stumble onto a slaughterhouse. The place is the home of an enormous serial killer, Jacob Goodnight (Kane aka Glen Jacobs). The place is dark, creepy, full of crucifixes, and a children’s religious record is playing in the background. There is a distraught girl is in the middle of the living room. The officers come into the house, but Goodnight attacks them with an axe. Goodnight easily whacks Williams’ partner and leaves Williams with only one hand - but not before he can get off a shot and seemingly puts a bullet in the killer’s head. Williams calls for backup (with his good hand) and his severed one still containing a flashlight twitches and the flashlight reveals that the girl has no eyes.
Flash forward four years, Williams (with prosthetic arm) is working with troubled teenagers. His latest community service project takes a group of such youths to the abandoned Blackwell Hotel to reclaim the place from the ravages of neglect. Russell (Mikael Wilder), Richie (Craig Horner), Melissa (Penny McNamee), Zoe (Rachael Taylor), Christine (Christina Vidal), Michael (Luke Pegler), Kira (Samantha Noble), and Tyson (Michael J. Pagan) all end up in the program under the supervision of Frank, Hannah (Tiffany Lamb), and the elderly Margaret (Cecily Polson). Unbeknownst to any of them (well not really) Goodnight has moved his base of ocular operations to the Blackwell and is wanting to add more eyeballs to his collection.
See No Evil is a film difficult to describe. Not content-wise, it’s a typical slash and dash. It’s hard to describe in the vein of reviewing. Here’s the problem – I really didn’t end up hating the thing the way I expected I would. Maybe it was that I was expecting it to suck really hard and it turned out to be an entertaining 80 minutes. Now don’t get me wrong – the Lawrence of Arabia of eyeball gouging serial killers this ain’t.
Somebody must've told Kane there was a special glowering category in the Oscars
The plot steals bits from other horror films. Goodnight’s back-story is a bit of Carrie, inbred Texas Chainsaw Massacre types, and a little Friday the 13th (the first one, you’ll know what I mean when you see the movie) thrown into a jar of formaldehyde and eyeballs. Did his story really interest me? Nope. In fact, I was more interested in other bits that the filmmakers really didn’t touch on.
For instance, the Blackwell Hotel has its top floors burnt out from a mysterious fire and since the only exit from those floors was locked everyone perished. When we do make it up to those floors (the baddie obviously makes his base of ophthalmologic operations up there), we find that there are all sorts of hidden passages, two way mirrors, and the like. They never really go into any detail about the mysterious Blackwells and what was going on in the penthouse of their hotel. That interested me, Goodnight did not.
Speaking of him, Kane isn’t going to be winning any Oscars soon. The glowering killer he makes okay (he even glowers while masturbating?!?), but when he has to emote during the big finale – you’ll be rolling in the aisles. Not to mention the silliness of the swarms of flies that follow him around since he has a festering head wound from his first encounter with Williams. He really should’ve gotten that looked at.
Maybe what I’m trying to say is that the film is fun in a Mystery Science Theatre sort of way. Have your horror/gorehound buddies over, pop open a couple of brewskies, and let the ridicule begin. I thought the movie was well photographed (director Gregory Dark comes from porno and music videos), but the plot was old hat.
She had a little different reaction after watching the movie, I only gouged out one eye
See No Evil is presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) and enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Special features include two audio commentaries with writer Dan Madigan and director Gregory Dark, “Do You See the Sin?” making of documentary, “Behind the Evil” WWE promotional featurette, storyboard to film comparison, and theatrical trailers.
Technically it didn’t stink as bad as I thought that it would, but original it is not. I’m sure the experienced horror movie viewer will see all of the plot points coming from a mile away, but it might entertain you if you’re willing to turn off your brain (put it in a glass jar on your desk for this film – trust me).
See No Evil is now available at Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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