See
No Evil has a simple agenda. It isn’t art and it isn’t a striking return
to the horror genre. No, it’s sole purpose is to appease fans of wrestling
giant Kane (aka Glen Jacobs), and on that level, this ludicrous slice of slash-o-rama,
gleefully succeeds.
Not
that the so-called plot really matters, but here it goes; There’s this cop
see. He and his partner are dispatched to this run down suburban home where some
weird shit has supposedly gone down. They cautiously enter the house when a loud,
blood curdling scream sounds from within. They make their way upstairs, and upon
entering one of the rooms, they discover a young woman curled up in a little ball,
shivering. They make there way towards her, when suddenly, BAM! A large, axe wielding
figure bursts into the room striking down one of the officers almost immediately.
The other officer quickly draws his gun, but the psycho is always faster in these
movies, so as expected, the killer lops the cop’s hand off before he has
a chance to draw his firearm. Lucky for the officer, he still has another good
arm. With it, he pulls his weapon and shoots the lumbering baddie in the head.
As the policeman lie there in a pool of his own blood, the screen fades to black.
As
we fade in, we get the whole “4 years later” deal. There lies the very
same cop, only he’s changed in the last four years. With his artificial arm
(as I watched him, I couldn’t help but think of Woody Harrelson in Kingpin),
he drags himself out of bed so that he might engage in another fun filled day
on the job.
Now
at a glance, you’d think See No Evil would turn into some sort of half baked
expose on redemption. You know the drill: The cop who was left for dead, has a
chance to vindicate himself by finding the attacker who killed his partner, and
putting an end to the psychopath’s life. You’d be wrong. Instead, See
No Evil switches gears and finds a group of twenty something delinquents thrown
together at a run down hotel where they’re forced to clean the place up as
a form of community service. Overseeing the operation is the aforementioned once
celebrated cop. Little do any of these folks know that a lumbering, hook wielding
maniac resides in the hotel. In fact, it’s the very same lumbering maniac
that appeared at the beginning of the movie.
As
these moronic, clueless, highly unlikable twenty-somethings go about their routine,
killer Kane starts picking them off one by one, and we the audience are all the
more grateful for it. And there lies the point of the film. We’re supposed
to root for Kane. We want to see him kill these people. Yes, it’s perverse,
and yes the movie is completely disposable, but I was somewhat amused by it.
See
No Evil sort of took me back to the underground horror of my youth. The Funhouse,
Hell Night etc. It winks at the likes of Psycho, Friday the 13th and Jeepers Creepers
to be sure, but mostly, it’s a bizarre meshing of lesser known 80's slasher
films.
The acting
is terrible, the plot preposterous, and the situations absurd, but when Kane is
on screen doing his thing, the movie is sickly joyful. What’s more, it delivers
plenty of gore for those who are into that sort of thing. I happen to be into
that sort of thing.
Strangely
enough, the movie does kill off a couple of characters I didn’t expect to
see die, and one of the people who does manage to survive, didn’t really
deserve to. This film offers up no lessons learned. See No Evil isn’t at
all interested in allowing it’s characters to go through any sort of deep
transformation. Once an asshole, always an asshole.
Kane,
with his bulky biceps and evil scowl, isn’t exactly a thespian, but watching
him utterly destroy his victims by way of hook or by slamming them into a wall,
was an absolute hoot. The very idea that the film makers would try to make Kane’s
so called character sympathetic or vulnerable by giving us snapshots into his
prison like past, made the silly proceedings all the more enjoyable.
The
most entertaining moment to behold in this movie however, is Kane’s final
scene, a grandiose bit of nasty business that’s surprisingly well conceived.
Sadly, I was at a screening all by my lonesome, so I had to imagine the loud applause
that will almost certainly accompany this sequence at any crowded showing of See
No Evil. And in an interesting bit of irony, director Gregory Dark and screenwriter
Dan Madigan don’t bog the movie down with a sequel ready ending, although
I’m sure there will be one if the movie grosses dime one.
Is
See No Evil. Dumb? Hell yes! But for a film about a massive, head shot, hook wielding
religious simpleton with bad teeth and coke nails who likes to rip eyeballs from
his victims’s sockets, it might just be the greatest film you’ve ever
seen.
