I had to make a couple more adjustments due to poor quality of downloads. Doghouse is out, and I will move Human Centipede down the list and watch it once I purchase it on DVD (it came out this week). I am not sure what I am replacing Doghouse with yet, but I will replace it before I get too much further down the list. Right now, I have jumped ahead of Doghouse and Human Centipede to See No Evil.
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Movie Number- 117
October Horrorthon Number- 5
Title- See No Evil (2006)
Running Time- 84 minutes
Director- Gregory Dark
Writer- Dan Madigan
Starring- Glen Jacobs (as Kane), Christina Vidal, Michael J. Pagan, Luke Pegler, Samantha Noble, Rachael Taylor, Steven Vidler, Craig Horner, Tiffany Lamb
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A group of juvenile delinquents are sent to a hotel to help renovate it to become a homeless shelter. The Blackwell Hotel had a fire occur in the building in the 1970’s, and is extremely dilapidated. Less than one night in, the inmates discover that they are not alone. Enter serial killing madman, and the teen’s fight to survive the night.
See No Evil is an obvious nod back to 1960’s/70’s horror classics such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, and Halloween. There are scenes in the film that will have horror movie vets screaming “straight out of TCM”, or “Jason does that”. Where the film flops, though, is the terrible script. Dan Madigan is a WWE writer (this was produced by WWE Films, hence Kane’s involvement in the movie), and it shows throughout See No Evil. Not only is the script terrible, some of the actors are equally as bad. Normally, when a script is bad, I give the actors a pass, but not in this case: some of these actors could have been acting Shakespeare, and would probably suck even worse than they did in See No Evil. Specifically, the male cop in the movie – Officer Williams – was dreadful, as were the other older characters in the movie (the lady who owned the hotel, and the female cop). Kane did a fine job as the psychopath, but that could be my wrestling nostalgia talking (I loved Kane back when I watched wrestling). Another problem with the movie was the annoying camera effects that the director had used over and over again. It was as if they discovered a new setting on their cameras and wanted to play with it again and again as they were filming. It did little to add to the movie. Also, the CGI effects were plain bad, but the other special effects – such as fake dead bodies, blood, and so on – were done quite well. The reason this movie was elevated above one star is because once the story gets out of the way, and some of the poorer actors are gone from the movie, the gore and death scenes were a blast. Some of them were very unique, and all were bloody. This was this movie’s saving grace.
Unfortunately for See No Evil, lots of blood and some cool death scenes are not enough to earn it even three stars. There were too many problems to overlook: a terrible script, bad acting, and pathetic CGI work. That isn’t to say that I wouldn’t enjoy watching Kane reprise his role for a sequel though. I doubt that will be happening any time soon, however, due to mediocre reception to this first film. Unless one is really lacking on horror movie options, I wouldn’t bother with See No Evil this Halloween season.
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Branden has been a film fan since he was young, roaming the halls of Blockbuster Video, trying to find the grossest, scariest looking VHS covers to rent and watch alone in the basement. It wasn’t until recently, though, that Branden started seeking out the classics of cinema, and began to develop his true passion for the art form. Branden approaches each film with the unique perspective of having studied the art from the inside, having both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in acting. He has been a film critic since 2010, and has previously written for Inside Pulse Movies, We Love Cult, and Diehard Gamefan. His biggest achievement as a film critic, to date, has been founding Cinefessions and turning it from a personal blog to a true film website, housing hundreds of film and television reviews, and dozens of podcasts.
