I like to think I have a penchant for exaggeration. And yet, no matter how hard I strain my brain, I cannot summon any hyperbole to properly relate just how bad WWE Films’ See No Evil is. Every time I rest my fingers on the home keys, they impulsively want to carve forth a ruthless stream of obscenities. You see, this is one of those rare instances where not only do I simply not like a movie, but the act of watching it angered me on a cellular level.
It may be more than just a horrible horror movie. It just may be the worst movie I’ve ever seen.
For the love of God, please do not let this become one of those scenarios where I write an unrelenting, negative review of a film and you, nameless reader, say to yourself, “There is no way this movie can actually be THAT bad? I’ve got to see this for myself!”
You don’t. You really, really don’t.
Within a few minutes of the moving starting, a rookie cop and a veteran go into a creepy abandoned house, where the rookie gets chopped and the veteran loses an arm and shoots the killer in the head. Cut to the news story explaining the multiple bodies in the house that was thought to be abandoned. Cut to four years later, and the one-armed vet is now a one-armed guard in county lockup, moving a specially selected group of coed teens convicts off to a weekend of community service.
From then on in, See No Evil is set in a burned-out gilded age hotel cramped full of county lockup coed cons from the Jaded Age. They are briefly introduced in camera flashes of name and crime, and about 15 to 30 seconds covering the stereotype they fall into. There’s the kleptomaniac yuppie, the hacker, the two aggravated assaults with hearts of gold, the two drug dealers/ex lovers, one of whom has now succumbed to the prison charms of the aggravated assault female.
The group gets to the hotel, which looks like it cost a few million when it was built but somehow has been purchased by an unnamed charity whose sole representative is a short, quiet grandmother who wants to turn the hotel into a homeless shelter (because that’s exactly what happens to nine-story blighted buildings that have been around since the ’20s). She sets the kids to work and tells them to avoid the atrium at night, and then everyone goes their separate ways. The hacker and breaking and entering decide to look for treasure on the top floor, and it’s all of about 30 seconds until the look for treasure brings out the creepy large man with the hook, and the blood starts flowing again.
About halfway through the movie (probably around the time the writers realized that at the rate they were going they would run out of victims in another five minutes), the killing slows down and bad guy Kane takes center stage. And when he’s center stage and not just a brief glimpse in the camera lens you come to realize that your villain is a retarded and pastier version of the Pillsbury Doughboy, and when that cat is out of the bag there’s not much left to scare you. From then on in the movie turns to camp, the cinematography loses its charm, and the movie ends up getting more predictable and less exciting the longer you watch it.
It is never scary, completely transparent and dreadfully filmed. The set design is expansive, and, as much as it hurts me to admit it, impressively mediocre at times. But porno-director extraordinaire, Gregory Dark, hasn’t the slightest clue on how to utilize the stylish disgust. So it just sits there, stagnating to the point where it is simply annoying to see it take up 97% of the frame.
Overall, See No Evil is a faceless knockoff in the predictable tradition regarding the recent emergence of the profitable (yet utterly uninspired) Saw movie series. According to Dark’s perfunctory scare tactics, the dismemberment of limbs and screeching lungs should be enough to fulfill the common sadist’s appetite. Unfortunately, the gluttonous level of terror displayed in the movie feels overwrought. Consequently, it never really connects with the sensationalistic tendencies it strains in conveying. Some may feel complete by the rancid and ruthless stretches that the film harbors in its congested heart. If only it took the time to capitalize compellingly on the madness that it wallows in so synthetically, See No Evil could have been a camp-driven creepshow for the ages.