Review: See No Evil

The film is as shallow as a toilet bowl and twice as rank as its usual contents.

See No Evil
Photo: Lions Gate Films

As shallow as a toilet bowl and twice as rank as its usual contents, See No Evil marks the first feature film from World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) productions and former porn auteur Gregory Dark—a dubious pedigree this drearily derivative slasher flick more than ably lives down to. Operating under the premise that gratuitous gore is the only prerequisite for satisfying horror audiences, this lumbering mess of a B movie is like a long-lost entry in the Friday the 13th franchise, following a group of juvenile detention center inmates—each of them introduced by mug shot freeze frames and defined by their criminal rap sheets—as they’re forced to renovate the dilapidated Blackwell Hotel by a guard who, while working as a cop years earlier, lost an arm to an enormous serial killer (WWE wrestler Kane) that he eventually killed. Predictably, the now-undead behemoth turns up at the Blackwell intent on slaying the diverse collection of violent boys and bitchy girls, employing either a giant fire ax or a hook attached to a long chain to act out his murderous compulsions. Jittery flashbacks elucidate that such impulses were spawned from being locked in a cage as a child by his zealot mother, who used to offer the kid porn and then chastise him for his sinful self-gratification urges (how confusing!). Dark’s plagiaristic mise-en-scéne (a dull rehash of Hostel and Saw) and Dan Madigan’s musty screenplay (cribbing from countless superior sources), however, offer neither titillation nor terror. As with Kane’s silent, hulking albino brute, the film seems to mainly have maggots on the brain, its gruesome fatalities, which are much too flaccid considering the director’s intimate familiarity with money shots, surrounded by endless close-ups of roaches, flies, and other assorted creepy-crawlies. But as per See No Evil’s laughably literal title, the primary motif here is eyes, which the rampaging villain likes to remove from victims with his bare hands. It’s a fate far preferable to viewing such dreck through to its end-credits capper featuring a peeing dog and a hollow orbital socket.

Score: 
 Cast: Kane, Christina Vidal, Samantha Noble, Michael J. Pagan, Steven Vidler, Cecily Polson, Luke Pegler, Rachael Taylor, Penny McNamee, Craig Horner, Michael Wilder, Tiffany Lamb, Cory Robinson  Director: Gregory Dark  Screenwriter: Dan Madigan  Distributor: Lions Gate Films  Running Time: 84 min  Rating: R  Year: 2006  Buy: Video

Nick Schager

Nick Schager is the entertainment critic for The Daily Beast. His work has also appeared in Variety, Esquire, The Village Voice, and other publications.

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