With a former porn director named Gregory Dark at the helm (New Wave Hookers, Between the Cheeks), I was sure this film was going to be a huge waste of my time. But every so often I watch a horror movie that that looks terrible, but turns out to be pretty good (or at least better than what I expected). Such is the case with the film See No Evil.
Written by World Wrestling Entertainment scribe Dan Madigan (yes those shows are scripted), and starring WWE’s Glen “Kane” Jacobs, See No Evil is about a group of juvenile delinquents who are assigned to participate in a clean-up project at an old, dilapidated hotel. Unfortunately for the teens, the hotel is occupied by a seven-foot psychopathic killer named Jacob Goodnight. Believing that the soul resides in a person’s eyes, Jacob proceeds to hunt down the intruders and plucks out their eyeballs.
There’s not much more to the plot than this, and I found the story to be rather uninspired. Nonetheless, it turned out to be a fairly solid horror film.
For starters, I must comment on the set design. Rarely does the set design of a horror movie deserve notable praise, but production designer Michael Rumpf did a fantastic job of bringing the creepy and decrepit hotel to life. I might even go so far as saying that the set design alone carried the film.
However the movie had other redeeming qualities as well. There was a fair amount of blood, guts, and gore. And watching Jacob pluck out his victims’ eyeballs made me feel a bit squeamish at times. There were a couple good scenes of blended GCI and traditional make-up effects as well.
On the downside, the film had little to no suspense or tension build-up at all. In fact, there weren’t even any cheap “jump out at you” scares to speak of either. Director Gregory Dark doesn’t bother to create any atmosphere, but simply approaches each and every death sequence hastily and clumsily.
Nonetheless, I found the film to be moderately entertaining and worth watching. Fans of WWE’s Kane and people who enjoy a good psycho-killer, hack ‘n slash movie should enjoy this film. But people who like their horror movies with a little more substance might want to skip this one.
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