Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Bad Movie Month hopes to See No Evil the next time around

For our not-so-grand finale in Bad Movie Month's Wrestle Movie Mania, we have the horror of seeing Kane in his deadly debut slasher flick, See No Evil. The best thing that I can say about this film right from the start is that it's less than ninety minutes(and not even a full hour and a half to boot) long.

You don't really see Kane until the first half hour but he does make his presence known during the opening credits, which have the charmingly gritty look of a Tool video. This sad story begins with two cops checking out a disturbance report at a creepy house that's blaring creepy children's choir music and things go from bad to worse.

Sure, violence is to be expected but the arm amputation that happens in the first five minutes looks so fake that I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they used a prop from Spencer's Gifts there. Plus, the swooping close up shot into the first of many severed eye sockets made me wonder if someone intended to make this a 3-D film:



 Cut to four years later and surviving one armed cop Frank(Steven Vidler) and his partner Hannah(Tiffany Lamb) are leading a co-ed group of juvie hall kids into an abandoned hotel to do a little clean-up work.

This "volunteer" service is supposed to shave some time off of their sentences but given how wary of lawsuits most people dealing with kids are these days(which one of the few adults present even mentions!), this is too farfetched even for a cheesy horror movie like this. Not to mention having just Frank and Hannah as supervisors. Yes, because you only need two adults, along with a a little too nice granny type, to handle eight teenagers with criminal tendencies for a weekend,sure!

 Naturally, the teens wander off to make their drama like Kira(Samantha Noble) who is worried about one of the guys,Michael(Luke Pegler) as she turned on him during their drug dealing past. Later on, Kira has a lot more to worry about as Kane's psycho killer character becomes fixated on her and her religious tattoos. Backstory is hinted at for most of these characters but hardily developed as the killing spree begins:


Kane's killer is named Jacob Goodnight and in flashbacks, we see that he was tortured by a religious zealot of a maternal figure into becoming "the hand of God". Yep, it's that type of lazy connect the dots story telling that we get here, folks.

The whole movie is pretty pointless and dull,with story line set-ups that go nowhere. Remember Frank, the cop from the opening credits? Sure, he suddenly recalls the murderous lug that got away from him as the bodies start piling up but is there a big showdown between him and Kane? Nope! He gets hooked in the head quickly in order to spend more time on the frightened teens.

  Does Christine(Christina Vidal),who Frank said was unjustly convicted for fighting back against her stepdad become the big hero that saves the day? No, not really-she does lead the charge to rescue Kira but her Final Girl moments are stepped on by Michael, who happens to have a piece of bathroom pipe on hand for fighting.

Mostly, this movie is an exercise in grungy-gross set pieces and gory chase scenes. Even for fans of gross-out horror, this can get really boring real fast.

Kane is mostly mute during the film and watching his tormented facial expressions is almost worse than than his preferred methods of dispatching his victims, which include a grappling hook and chain, an ax and his grimy Lee press on nails to pluck out eyeballs. He doesn't make for an interesting villain at all and yet, this boringly gruesome movie managed to get a sequel. Granted, it's a direct-to-video feature but surprisingly, it got better reviews than the first one:


Well, the bell has rung for Bad Movie Month this year and much thanks to everyone who checked in and spread the good word about this cinematic slam-fest.  I also want to thank my sister Stephanie for her participation. Not only was this experience a fun sibling bonding time, I got to learn so many things such as the true significance of May 19:




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