Movie Review: See No Evil (2006)

If you were ever going to cast a pro wrestler in a movie about a psychopathic monster who towers over everybody he comes across, Glenn ‘Kane’ Jacobs would naturally be the perfect fit.

And if you were ever going to review that movie, Halloween would naturally be the perfect time to do it.

So, here we find ourselves, gorging on popcorn as we watch The Big Red Machine stomp about a dilapidated and abandoned hotel as Jacob Goodnight, a murderous monster of a man with mommy issues and a penchant for ripping people’s eyeballs out.

Like The Shining meets Friday the 13th, nothing about See No Evil is particularly original. It’s every horror movie you’ve ever seen in which a group of good-looking young people with attitudes go to a creepy place and get hacked off one by one by an unhinged maniac.

The only difference is that this unhinged maniac carries a chain and hook rather than a machete, oh and that the kids are all juvenile delinquents forced to go to the creepy place to clean it up and get time off their prison sentence rather than to hang out, get drunk, and have sexy times.

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To be fair, they drink and have sexy times anyway, but that’s only because See No Evil seems so desperate to cram every horror movie cliche you’ve ever known into one 90-minute gorefest.

Still, having said all that, it’s worth pointing out that See No Evil isn’t an entirely terrible movie.

OK, so it’s certainly not a *good* movie, but it does have some redeemable qualities.

The kills are both creative and satisfyingly gruesome. Despite never having been particularly squeamish, even this long-time horror fan found himself wincing at some of the more innovative violence on display.

Speaking of display, that’s perhaps the movie’s best quality.

Visually, this is one great-looking piece of cinema with a fantastic aesthetic that really deserved to be utilised by a better script.

If only the creators had taken these features and used them to do something that was truly their own, they might have been onto a winner. Instead, they take a stunning horror aesthetic and a stunning brand of gore and underutilise it by using it to tell the same hackeyned murder-by-numbers horror film you’ve seen countless times before.

Honestly, it’s amazing that they came out with a sequel for this, but maybe we’ll save that one until next Halloween.

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Other pro wrestling movie reviews:

• No Holds Barred (1989)
• Monster Brawl (2011) 
• Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies (2013)
• Hell Comes to Frog Town (1988)
• Ready to Rumble (2002) 

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