WWE Studios’ first theatrical picture not to star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, See No Evil casts wrestler Kane as Jacob Goodnight. He’s the strong, silent type — as in simple-minded and mute and fond of torturing sinners, most of whom are teenagers. Four years after surviving a bullet in the brain put there by a cop — whose arm he then severed — Goodnight resides in the hidden hallways of an abandoned hotel.
There, the man society would never understand (partly due to the hole in his head buzzing with live flies) can retreat and be left alone … except for the weekend when eight juvenile delinquents (Transformers’ Rachael Taylor among them) are brought in to spruce it up for a homeless shelter. It’s all part of a community-service program overseen by that cop (Steven Vidler, The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course), now retired from the street beat, yet still without two working limbs up top. Regardless of shared history, Goodnight doesn’t see eye-to-eye with visitors … mostly because his hobby is squeezing out said peepers and showcasing them in jars.
Usually in horror movies, the bad guy’s pool of victims includes one each of all types — y’know, the nerd, the jock, the slut, the black one, etc. — but in See No Evil, they all pretty much fill the “troubled kid” slot. Goodnight is eager to use his knowledge of the hotel’s secret passageways to his advantage: spying on these well-scrubbed JD teens from behind two-way mirrors; popping out of elevators and dumbwaiters like a trapdoor spider; capturing them via hooked chains, which he wields with Olympics-worthy precision.
As slashers go, this one is nastier than most, despite opening titles that scream “made-for-TV.” (It wasn’t.) Kane exudes appropriate menace, no doubt helped by not having to speak. Nihilism spurts and gushes throughout — an uneasy feeling accentuated by the dingy, sweat-stained veneer favored by director Gregory Dark, here graduating to studio fare after a long career in porn (New Wave Hookers), would-be porn (the Animal Instincts trilogy) and may-as-well-be porn (Britney Spears videos).
Stick through the end credits for the stinger of the “deceased” Goodnight (who managed to return in 2014’s slicker, not-quite-sicker See No Evil 2) getting his face pissed on by a lifted-leg dog. Let’s see you try that, Marvel! —Rod Lott