At the start of See No Evil, two cops respond to a call of loud noise at a
dilapidated home. When they arrive, loud Christian music can be heard blasting
away from as far as the street. Nobody answers the door, and the cops burst in
once they hear screaming from inside. Of course, they never call for back up,
nor do they even bother to call in this ominous change in the situation, rather
they charge inside with guns drawn, finding a young woman in very bad shape--and
the cops both wind up in very bad shape themselves, once they meet the big goon
with the axe. The rookie gets the axe buried in his head--he’s the lucky one,
because he’s no longer in this stinker of a movie.
The surviving cop manages to shoot the psycho in the head--but not before losing
an arm in the process. Cut to four years later, and the one-armed cop is now a
juvenile hall counselor who--with his female counterpart--is escorting a coed
group of young offenders to an abandoned old hotel. You see, the wild-eyed
killer (who is still alive for some unknown reason) is in need of fresh meat,
and these lucky little buggers have been nominated because they’re all so darn
annoying. Well, all right…maybe that’s not really what the plot is about, but
you get the idea. See No Evil is basically a bid by the World Wrestling
Entertainment (who co-produced the film with Lionsgate) to create another horror
movie monster such as Freddy or Jason.
They wish....
While Kane--the imposing, bald wrestler who’s become something of a star on the
WWE telecasts--certainly has what it takes to become a good horror movie villain,
the movie they saddled him with is pretty much a piece of garbage. Think of
every dumb horror movie cliché--such as the fake out scare moment--and it’s in
this film. The maniac’s backstory is ripped off from the Friday The Thirteenth
films, and one of the women even has a shower scene! Not much originality here,
and instead of trying to be scary, the movie tries to be disgusting, with
countless close up shots of insects, maggots and rats scurrying all over the
place. The commentary by the film's writer and director is very funny--but in an
unintentional way. They speak of having very lofty goals in making this film,
with the Minotaur myth and the Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tale named as some
of their inspirations (?).
But the best horror films work well because they get you to care about
what happens to the people on the screen. This is the result of good writing,
great acting, and plenty of suspense--none of which See No Evil has. It's
populated with a bunch of cardboard cutouts, whom you could really care less
about. And Kane’s character, Jacob Goodnight (???), really isn’t that
much more interesting, either. He’s nothing more than a hulking thug with really
bad personal hygiene, and probably wouldn’t last a minute with either
Freddy or Jason. All you have are a series of elaborately staged kill
scenes--which the filmmakers gleefully gloat over like psychotics whose meds
have worn off--in an empty-headed, overtly sadistic movie that's not even fun to
watch for a laugh.
--SF
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