Ugh. May 19th.  A date that wrestling fans ridicule and dread. A date that has arrived once again. Thus this week’s “classic” wrestling homework from the “At Odds with Wrestling” podcast is the 2006 horror movie from WWE Studios, starring current mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee – Kane. That’s right we all sat down to watch See No Evil, which is very easy to find for free across streaming services. Like the classic that it deserves to be. 

Let’s get it out of the way from the start. This is a bad movie. Bad script, bad acting, bad ideas that someone thought would look cool. I lost track of how many times I paused to see how much time was left. And this movie is only 84 minutes long. I didn’t bother learning character names but I suppose that’s something I should look up for this review. A review that hurts to write because now I have to think about the movie all over again and experience it for I think a third time in my life. Watching it new in 2006, rewatch for this assignment, thinking about it now as I write it, and I hope that’s it for my life. 

We begin with a creepy montage of images over the opening credits. This creepy montage thing is done a few times before Bray Wyatt uses it years later. If anyone has ever seen the Rob Zombie directed Woolite commercial, it’s very similar. 

Two police officers show up to a crime in progress. They hear a woman scream. The house is very creepy and the director uses all sorts of lighting and angles and cuts throughout the movie to make things look worse. Skills he picked up while directing porn no doubt. That said, New Wave Hookers is a better contribution to cinema than See No Evil. Anyways, the cops find a woman and something is wrong with her but we don’t see it yet. Kane appears and kills one cop instantly. The other shoots Kane in the head but loses a hand in the process. The cop thinks Kane is dead and he sees the victim who has had her eyes removed but is still alive. This is also the first of many bad make up/bad CGI shots as the camera zooms into her eye holes. Again, a zoom shot the director has probably done before. The surviving cop passes out and we jump to moments later when all of the emergency vehicles and press are on the scene. More bodies have been found on the property and this is a huge gory story that I’m sure any teenagers in the area would have heard about. 

Four years later and our surviving cop has some PTSD but is trying to make the most of it. He does programs to make the town a better place. His latest idea involves eight teenagers from a juvenile detention facility getting a weekend work release to take time off their sentences. These are all teens yet the girls all look like veteran bartenders and the guys are going bald pretty early for their supposed ages. I’ll add names or descriptions when I really need to. 

The teens, along with the cop from earlier and some other cop or social worker or whatever – lady cop – all board the bus to head to the Blackwell, a hotel that used to be a playground for the wealthy but had a fire 35 years ago! This place has become a hide out for homeless, drug addicts, and the like for 35 years. Yet there is electricity, running water, and apparently the facilities are clean enough for the teens to take showers and have sex along the way. Honestly, the housekeeping is the grossest thing in the movie. 

The teens have to clean up for 3 days and get a month off their time. Not a one of them looks like they have ever cleaned anything in real life, much less their characters. The hotel is full of secret pathways and two way mirrors, all of which are used by Kane along the way. Much of this information is given to us by the old woman who bought the hotel. I’m sure she’s just here for the exposition and nothing else. Two of the guys talk about a safe full of money that is still in the building and have a plan to find it. The others eat and flirt in this outdoor atrium that’s also in the middle of the hotel and oh also has holes in the walls that don’t go to the rest of the hotel (you know, because this atrium is in the middle) but somehow this one hole goes to the outside of the building and is big enough for stray dogs to wander in and out. Yet too small for any of the teens to even once think of as a way to escape. 

Now one of the girls, Kira, is taking a shower. She has a ton of religious symbols tattooed on her body but not a one of them gives her the enlightenment to use a shower curtain. Someone is watching her from one of the holes in the walls. Michael shows up to harass her. Turns out the two of them have some sort of abusive relationship past. The two cops are having drinks because they think all of the teens are asleep. The two treasure hunters are searching and instead find some dead homeless person with his eyes removed. They panic and get turned around in the maze that is the higher floors. Kane catches one with his hook on a chain and drags him into the elevator. I think his name was Richie. The old woman tells the cops that the elevator is moving and it must be the teens screwing around. Lady cop goes to investigate and is immediately killed when the doors open. Kane takes an eye. There are a lot of CGI flies and real mice throughout this movie just to give it some extra yuck. Kane gets Kira while the cop, the old lady, and this hippie girl see the whole thing. Kira is still alive though because Kane has a hang up over religious imagery, which is the only reason the girl from 4 years ago is still alive. The cop realizes who it is, but is in disbelief. Then he’s killed anyways. Real short amount of screen time for the adults. He didn’t even have a chance to tell the teens about Kane. Sorry, not Kane. The character is named Jacob Goodnight. A name which is never said in the movie because that scene was cut out. 

Kane knocks Kira around but she’s still alive. Just now she’s in a cage too. The other four teens are going to get high and half of them are hoping to have sex. Kane sees much of this from the other side of some two way mirrors. Kira wakes up inside of her cage in Kane’s Penthouse of horrors. Richie wakes up too for a minute until Kane takes his eyes. Kane puts Kira in the shower to get her sins out and we flash back to some woman doing that to a young Kane. Hey, I wonder if that’s an old woman now. Hmmm. 

The hippie girl and a guy that doesn’t matter are about to have sex on one of the many clean beds in this hotel. Kane has rigged a system of strings to bells and now he knows someone is on that bed. Kane rushes to watch them from behind a mirror. Hippie girl realizes something is wrong. Kane breaks through the mirror and they go running. Kane is fooled many times by locked doors. Hippie girl and her guy are going to escape down a fire hose that just happens to be in this closet. She gets down quite a ways but then is pulled up. The guy was killed off camera, that’s how much he means to this story. Hippie girl freaks out, ends upside down with the hose around her ankles, then Kane drops the slack and she goes crashing through the previously mentioned atrium glass and lands not quite like Gwen Stacy but close. She fractures her wrist and there’s bone sticking out. The dog from earlier comes out the hotel to check on her and licks the dripping blood. Then out of nowhere many dogs come through and eat her alive. What in the hell? Have these dogs been trained? Are they that hungry? I guess Kane gets the assist for the kill but not the goal. 

Kane goes after the rest. Michael, who previously assaulted Kira, is now hitting on the blonde who has been annoying us the entire movie. He pushes her to safety when Kane attacks. It’s not enough though. Blonde has a stolen phone which rings while she’s hiding. Kane now finds her and shoves the phone down her throat, choking her. I feel like this was meant to be a more impactful death but like so much of this movie it just falls flat. Tye and Margaret, Tye who was one of the treasure hunters, and Margaret who saw Kane kill the cop, are still alive. They are also the only two black characters and have made it this far in the movie. They are also the only two who don’t have pictures on the movie’s IMDB page. They meet up with Michael in a big, holy shit these three characters are still alive? While the movie is fast paced it also doesn’t grab hold and if a character or three have been off screen long enough they’re assumed dead. These three set up one of the other bell strings and now Kane breaks through a wall to attack them. He knocks Michael down and again, we assume he’s dead. The other two escape up an elevator hatch. They end up in Kane’s room. The money from the safe is all over the walls. I can’t imagine it’s still valid currency. All of the eyes on the bills are cut out, which is a nice touch. Kira is still locked up in the cage. Kane watches her and begins to touch himself. 

Now, my memory may be foggy, but I swear this was supposed to be a plot point. That Jacob has a huge monster dick. Maybe Vince McMahon made some sort of comment about it. Maybe it’s a plot point in the movie novelization. No, we are not starting the At Odds bookclub to read this. 

Tye and Margaret want to save Kira. Tye starts breaking jars of eyes to get Kane’s attention. Kane finds Tye hiding behind the safe. Tye gets tased and crushed behind the safe. Margaret can’t find the keys to save Kira. This cage does not look that strong. I would really think the two of them could rip the zip ties or whatever is holding this thing together. The old woman shows up, Kira and Margaret think she’ll help them. Instead she asks, “why is that whore still alive?” Oh what a swerve! Turns out the old woman is Kane’s mom. She’s the one that abused him for looking at women. She locked him in cages. Where he also touched himself, so yeah, there must have been some more plot to that. His mom tied some girl to a bed – it’s unclear if this was Kane’s friend, girlfriend, or just a random woman he looked at in an impure way – and removed her eyes. So that’s where all of this started. The mom wanted revenge on the cop who hurt her son, the teens were just a bonus. Kane’s mom wants him to kill Kira but he’s so conflicted. Pretty girl with tattoos or abusive mom? It’s a tough decision. Kane picks up his mom and impales her on some spikes that are in the wall. She twitches a lot but let’s assume she’s dead. Kane frees Rita, Margaret has the dead cop’s gun and fires it, but there are no bullets left. Kane is in a rage and begins to choke both women. Suddenly Michael returns and hits Kane with an ax to the knee. Pipe to the back of the head, where the bullet wound is, and maggots come out of Kane’s hole. The three surviving teens hide in other rooms, I’m not sure why they don’t run downstairs. They open the window in the room and when Kane breaks in he assumes they went out the window, much like two of his victims did earlier. Instead it’s a three on one attack. Hit him hard and fast Avengers! Kane falls out the window and hangs on for far too long. Kira (I think) takes the pipe and runs it through Kane’s eye socket. This is enough for him to release his grip and fall, bouncing off of everything sticking out from another level of the hotel. Kane crashes through the atrium glass and we get a CGI effect of his heart exploding. The three survivors – Margaret the black girl who is barely named, Michael the abuser, Kira who he abused. So, yeah, not who anyone would have expected to survive until the end except maybe Kira. They ask Michael why he came back. “Didn’t want to walk out of here alone.” Oh what a nice man. Let’s forgive what we’re told he did to Kira before the movie. 

Mid credits, one of the dogs from earlier returns to piss into Kane’s eye hole. 

Honestly, the movie feels like it was written by committee. A committee of Vince and equally humored people discussing what they think would be cool in a horror movie. Then some poor writer had to figure out a way to tie it all in together. There’s a lot of inspiration from other horror movies and ideas that feel like they thought they had something really original but fell flat. If you’re a wrestling fan, there’s a reason to watch it as a curiosity. I know many horror fans who will watch everything no matter how bad. Otherwise I can think of many better ways to spend 90 minutes. Maybe a nap.