See No Evil
If you like stories about psychotic killers, See No Evil will make Halloween"s Mike Myers look like a sissy.
Story
Two cops arrive at an abandoned house where they've heard screaming. They find a woman hunched over and her eyes are plucked out. A seven-foot monster Jacob Goodnight (Kane) then hacks one of the officers in half and cuts the other officer's arm off--but not before he shoots the maniac in the head. That officer, Frank Williams (Steve Vidler), recuperates and four years later is assigned to a youth detention program. His first job is to escort some delinquents to an abandoned Blackwell Hotel, where a little old historian Margaret (Cecilly Polson) needs volunteers to help her tidy up. Instead, one by one, the young people become part of the eyeball collection of the psycho who was traumatized by an over-religious mother. Aren"t we all?
Acting
Yes, there is acting in this, including from the World Wrestling Entertainment bad-boy Kane, who could develop a Freddy Krueger-like franchise as this homicidal religious freak. He grunts and huffs but also sobs and shows a conscience at crucial times. And, he's scary, not laughable, which is always a danger in these kind of films. With what little they have to play off of, the supporting team is good, especially Craig Horner as an ambitious thief who has maps of all the secret corridors in the hotel. Among the delinquents are streetwise Christine (Christina Vidal), an a--hole bully Michael (Luke Pegler), a tattooed beauty Kira (Samantha Noble) and a seductive shoplifter Zoe (Rachael Taylor). Taylor"s Paris Hilton-like persona makes her one of the victims you can't wait to see get it. Some of the others hardly last long enough worth mentioning, even though many of them have characters that are surprisingly fleshed-out, before they become popped-out eye candy.
Direction
See No Evil offers plenty of jump moments, squirming gross-out scenes and hide-your-eyes shocks, with a plot reminiscent of any of the Friday the 13th or Saw movies. Some of the gore is particularly gruesome, and if you don't know what an eyeball looks like when it pops out of your head, then you'll certainly have an anatomy lesson here. First-time feature director Gregory Dark, known for making music videos, utilizes those fast-cut edits, muted colors and washed-out tones to create the horror. The camera closes in on bugs, flies and even dives into the eye socket of a hollowed-out face. It follows a line of booby-traps in the hotel, a jiggling arm that's cut off and even into a hole in the psycho-monster's head, which is filled with maggots. Dark is never shy about any of it, and gore fans won't be disappointed.
Bottom Line
Hollywood.com rated this film 2 1/2 stars.