|
SEE NO EVIL (2006)
See a pro wrestler whack off! I cringed mightily when I first saw the trailers for this movie, but a couple of things made me curious enough to expend one of my free passes on it. One, is simply that it looks a little different from the standard pro-wrestler star vehicle - most of these guys star in movies where to do the exact same thing they do in wrestling. Talk tough, pose, and throw people around, PG-13 style. This Kane guy has elected, instead, to violently kill a bunch of skinny teenagers, in an R-rated movie no less. The other thing is that it's directed by one Gregory Dark, who turns out to be a hard-core porno director. (the parallels between porno and pro wrestling are too numerous to get into here) I wasn't sure what to expect from a "respectable" theatrical release from such a source, but I can't remember the last time such a transition was made. Tom DeSimone, maybe? That was like twenty-five years ago! See No Evil is no Hell Night, but it is a little better than expectations. A little. It's a dutifully formulaic old-school slasher movie with some obligatory newer elements (multiple survivors, video-game and J-horror borrowings like ghostly whispers and spaz-edits at moments of extra insanity from the killer). If you miss the old school of slasher flicks and you're in the depths of your most undemanding hours, I suppose it'll do. Kane plays...I don't think I noticed what the hell his name is. But he's definitely from the "strong, silent type" school of slashers, saving his one brief sentence of spoken dialogue for late in the movie. He's been nursing an untreated gunshot wound to the head for a few years (that we later find still has maggots growing in it), and hangs out in a burnt-out and run-down hotel which is scheduled for some minor renovations. How minor? They're being done by a team of "troubled youth" (i.e. harmlessly clean-cut twentysomethings), led by a retired cop who put the bullet in the killer's head a few years ago and only had to lose his arm for it. His big thing is, basically, punishing sinners - dope smokers, fornicators, troubled youth in general. He even has an alarm system hooked up to let him know when people are having sex. He plucks out their eyes, but alas, does not rape their skulls. He's not very scary, since we see so damned much of him (can't have the star lurking in the darkness the whole time, can we?). He plays his villain as mostly looking a little bored, with a touch of confusion, as if he's been killing people for so long he can't remember why. His weapon: a length of chain with a nasty hook on the end, an impractical choice for the confines of hotel hallways but never mind, he stops using it about halfway through anyway. Writer Dan Madigan (only other credit: wrestling) seems to have seen all the old slasher movies, and he throws in a lot of things we saw a little more often back then (pop-psychology explanations for the killer's sexual dementia or whatever, the killing off of people when they're being naughty, mommy issues). He gives us a pretty standard spread of victims we want to keep around (because they're hot and willing to do nudity), victims we want to die, and victims we want to die horribly. Disappointingly, the one we really want to die horribly doesn't even die (a sop to a generation who thinks that what he was sent to the klink for was cool?), and the one that dies the most horribly, could've been a lot more deserving of it. The irony of this scene is hilarious, but it would've been funnier happening to someone better embodying what is generally disliked of this...type. Other types include the ho-smackin' pimp, the unrepentant shoplifter who delights in being bad, the girl who the cop says got a raw deal after what she did to her stepfather (just that word, "stepfather", says it all in a movie like this). Etcetera. The dialogue is typified by when one would-be victim delivers a coup de grace (OR IS IT???) with a lustily triumphant "FUCK YOU!!!" Bill Moseley would be disappointed. Mayhem-wise, two or three of the killings are howlers; the rest are pretty standard, though it looks pretty painful being dragged around by a hook on the end of a chain. The dilapidated hotel sets are mostly well-done and might've been atmospheric in a better movie, that kept its killer in the shadows a little and maybe understood the part vulnerability has to play in any movie that aims to thrill. While the killer certainly doesn't have it, at least one survivor turns out to be just as invulnerable as he is, and all survivors make it out of the movie looking like they've dealt with nothing more serious than, ironically, a day of renovating. At least the wrestling moves are kept to a minimum; I counted only three chokeslams. You could do worse, but not in theatres this week. (c) Brian J. Wright 2006 BACK TO THE S's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE |