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Review #130 of 365
Film: See No Evil (2006) [R] 100 minutes
WIP™ Scale: $8.75
Where Viewed: Lincoln Square Cinemas, Bellevue, WA 98004
When 1st Seen: 21 May 2006
Time: 1:05 p.m.
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DVD |
Truth be told, I had A-#1 no desire to see this film at all. The advertising campaign placed it squarely into the teenage slasher genre, and I’ve seen enough of those films to last me a lifetime—I guess there are people who get some thrill out of these films, but I am not one of them. In this case, however, the advertising campaign was probably unintentionally misleading. The film is not a teenage slasher film, though a bunch of teenagers do bite the dust in gruesome and horrific ways. Actually, this is more of a homicidal serial killer film, and some teenagers get slashed because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. In that sense, this is sort of a cross between the two genres—less compelling than Red Dragon but more engaging than I Know What You Did Last Summer.
From the outset, it’s as if director Gregory Dark and writer Dan Madigan have made a pact to create one of the most bleak, gruesome, and horrifying movies ever. It remains to be seen if they succeeded, but with the financial backing of the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) and one of its superstar, 7-foot tall, bad boy, wrestlers named Kane in the starring role, I guess you have the raw materials for a go at it. So, the film wastes no time in introducing the audience to the maniac killer Jacob Goodnight (Kane). The scene is an abandoned house in a run-down neighborhood of some non-descript suburb of what looks like Los Angeles but was actually probably in Australia where much of the film was shot using actors from the U.S.A. and Australia. Screams have been coming from the house along with the non-stop blaring of "All the Children of the World". Neighbors finally call the police to complain—go figure, maybe they could have lived with the occasional screams of terror, but "All the Children of the World"? No. There is no sense of time as to how long this has been going on. Two police officers arrive at the scene—one veteran and one rookie. They approach the house with caution. They hear screams. They don’t have to bust down the door, it’s ajar. They enter. The rookie cop says "Shouldn’t we wait for back-up?" The veteran Officer Williams (Australian actor, Steve Vidler) replies, "You wait," as he proceeds in. What's the rookie to do? He follows his partner. They find a young woman bound at hands and feet screaming for help. They look around. Rookie, of course, goes too far, and Jacob Goodnight introduces him to the swing of an axe. He then comes after Williams. Williams shoots him several times but not before Jacob lops of a good portion of his left arm and then flees.
From the outset, it’s as if director Gregory Dark and writer Dan Madigan have made a pact to create one of the most bleak, gruesome, and horrifying movies ever. It remains to be seen if they succeeded, but with the financial backing of the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) and one of its superstar, 7-foot tall, bad boy, wrestlers named Kane in the starring role, I guess you have the raw materials for a go at it. So, the film wastes no time in introducing the audience to the maniac killer Jacob Goodnight (Kane). The scene is an abandoned house in a run-down neighborhood of some non-descript suburb of what looks like Los Angeles but was actually probably in Australia where much of the film was shot using actors from the U.S.A. and Australia. Screams have been coming from the house along with the non-stop blaring of "All the Children of the World". Neighbors finally call the police to complain—go figure, maybe they could have lived with the occasional screams of terror, but "All the Children of the World"? No. There is no sense of time as to how long this has been going on. Two police officers arrive at the scene—one veteran and one rookie. They approach the house with caution. They hear screams. They don’t have to bust down the door, it’s ajar. They enter. The rookie cop says "Shouldn’t we wait for back-up?" The veteran Officer Williams (Australian actor, Steve Vidler) replies, "You wait," as he proceeds in. What's the rookie to do? He follows his partner. They find a young woman bound at hands and feet screaming for help. They look around. Rookie, of course, goes too far, and Jacob Goodnight introduces him to the swing of an axe. He then comes after Williams. Williams shoots him several times but not before Jacob lops of a good portion of his left arm and then flees.
"...less compelling than Red Dragon but more engaging than I Know What You Did Last Summer"
Willams miraculously survives. Goodnight is never found. The house if filled with bodies. The thing they have in common? All their eyes have been plucked out. Now advance in time 4 years. Williams has given up life on the beat to work with troubled youths. Flash! It was at this moment in the film when I said to myself, "Egad, this is absurd and getting worse. The review is going to take 10 seconds to write." For, the concept now is that Steve and his counterpart who works with female troubled youths are involved in a new co-ed program that takes 'carefully chosen' youths identified as low risk kids and places them in community service projects working together where three days of service reduces their sentence by one month. Huh? Co-ed? Huh? Three days for a month? Huh? They are so carefully selected that Williams who read all the files doesn't know that one of the girls selected was the narc that got one of the carefully selected boys thrown in what the kids all call "County" in the first place? Huh? The female counterpart is so incompetent in her job that she doesn't notice a pack of cigarettes and her cell phone being lifted from her purse? Huh? And, what is the community service project selected for this group of little darlings, the least troubled of whom was thrown in "County" for computer fraud? How about three days of working on de-trashing and cleaning up the lower levels of the Blackwell Hotel—a hotel that used to be a mob hotel where it's king pin and family were all killed in a huge fire that supposedly gutted the top two floors which are now far too dangerous to be renovated in part of the conversion of this monstrosity into a new homeless shelter because that's what this side of town needs, or so we are told by the mysterious woman who 'runs' the place. Does this strike anyone else as utterly absurd? Well, of course, they have to get the group of teenagers to the creepy locale so they can be slashed somehow. I just thought at the time this was a pretty convoluted way to go about it, and I had pretty much given up all hope that there was even a silver of a chance of this film turning out to be worth the efforts of all the people involved in making it. Little did I know, I'd seen nothing yet. The roach-infested former hotel was far and away the most filthy, vermin-ridden, nasty, gruesome sight I've ever seen. And, Gregory Dark chose to buck industry trends and shoot this film in a way that captured the greens and yellows of the sets making things look even more disgusting and revolting than they otherwise might have. As the teenagers are set off on their various cleaning tasks, the adults sit back and shoot the breeze. The peace only lasts a short time though for, lo and behold, is it Deus ex machina or just plain dumb luck, that Jacob Goodnight has been holed up here since his escape that fateful day four years ago when Office Williams shot him in the head, and he starts snatching, killing, and ripping the eyes out of the teenagers one by one. Horrific, sadistic, cruel, terrifying, and ghastly barely begin to describe the extremely unsettling ways that Jacob kills his victims. His weapon of choice is a meat hook and chain apparently because he can snare and then drag his victim bumping and smashing them into anything that gets in the way.
"...it is too bad directors forget that we might imagine far worse things than they can film..."
During all this, however, there were some glimmers. Some flashbacks into Jacob's childhood. Some glimpses into why he may have turned out the way he did. And suddenly, inexplicably, he leaps out of the world of Freddy Krueger and closer to the world of humanity. Closer only, for he has been turned into a monster, and there is clearly no way to bring him back. And then there is a twist that finally turns the entire film upside down. Taking its hints in more ways than one from one of the greatest horror movies of all time, Alfred Hitchock's Psycho, be prepared for a stunning revelation. The ending left no options for an immediate sequel—straight to video or otherwise— which I appreciate. And, there are survivors. In my mind, I went from really hating this film and everything about it, to feeling, I'd been lured into a trap designed to snare people who want to say, "This is just like all the others," when, in fact, it is not. It is slightly better. It was more intelligent than I originally gave it credit. And, I liked having that thrown in my face as if the movie knew it were doing that to me and probably a lot of others as well. Ok, so then I have to ask the question, because with just a few tweaks here and there and a more Hitchcockian approach to the senseless violence, gore, and continual one-ups-manship in trying to outdo each previous gore film with the latest and even more horrid, shocking, and dreadful way of killing people, why not have gone a route that would have made this a brilliantly scary, horror classic? I think sometimes it is too bad directors forget that we might imagine far worse things than they can film if they would just give the suggestion of what would happen and then the after shot. This was part of the genius of Hitchcock. He got that. So, with better acting by the adult leads, the kids were actually better than the adults (with the exception of Kane of course who was incredibly convincing as this menacing and naturally horrifying persona), less actual gore and sadistic violence (we don't need to see eyes actually being ripped out of a person's skull and the optic nerve being snapped like a rubber band), and a little less cheesy dialog, this might have been a really, really good movie. Instead, I'll have to rank in the middle of the bad to goods. The good stuff only slightly outweighs the bad.
See No Evil [DVD] (2006)
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