On the much-ballyhooed date of Friday, May 19th, WWE Films premiered their first movie nationwide. The wrestling character Kane starred in what could laughingly be considered a horror film called See No Evil. Curious to see what Executive Producer Vince McMahon and Lions Gate Films came up with, I went to see the film on a Sunday afternoon, and I’d kill to get those two hours of my life back.
TODAY’S ISSUE: WWE Films’ See No Evil
I realize I’m not a writer for the Inside Pulse Movie Zone, so hopefully those guys will forgive me this one time.
Before I get into the specifics of this horrendous attempt at horror, let me make a point: If “Kane” (not Glen Jacobs, mind you) can act in a movie, memorize scene arrangement and blocking, show the correct facial expression at the correct time, and be careful not to harm his co-stars while tossing them around the studio, then he’s NOT a psychopathic monster like WWE claims every Monday night on RAW. If Kane were the disturbed, deranged, dangerous madman he’s supposed to be, he never would have been able to show up on a movie set every day and do his job.
So then, what exactly is Kane? Is he a rational, intelligent man capable of taking direction and holding back his strength when required, or is he an emotionally scarred, hate ridden lunatic? Keep in mind, his character’s history has been so convoluted in the past nine years that I don’t have any hope of understanding him.
Kane was burned in a fire that may or may not have been set by his older brother, the Undertaker. He couldn’t talk due to injuries from the flames, but then he suddenly could speak. He wore a mask to hide his horrible scars, but when the mask came off, there were no scars. He supposedly never touched a woman until Tori Power became his girlfriend, but then we learned about a girl named Katie Vick who Kane may or may not have date-raped or shared a touching moment of necrophilia with after attending a party and driving her somewhere. Are you keeping up?
Kane has doused people with gasoline, yet established a sense of humor. He’s been taken away by men in white coats, yet he’s shown compassion for his various tag team partners. He’s had a love-hate-love-hate-love-hate-love-hate-love-hate relationship with his storyline brother and at times, his father, Paul Bearer.
The more I try to understand Kane, the more confused I become. I think the best thing to do with him would be to have some dominant newcomer like Lashley or the Great Khali dismantle Kane and put the character out of his misery for good. If WWE wanted to, they could always repackage Glen Jacobs and bring him back as something different a few months later. I know I could do with several consecutive Jacobs-free Monday nights.
As for the movie itself, we start by reaching into the horror film plot cliché machine and yanking out “abusive parent twists child into a monster”. How original. Next, we add “teens just wanna’ have fun (by way of sex, drugs and rock-and-roll)”. Brilliant. Season with a few “false finale” teasers and top with “we can’t distinguish true fear from discomfort caused by a dirty, disgusting aura”, and what have you got? A boring waste of 85 minutes and $9.00, that’s what.
Like a bad wrestling match that uses blading to provide drama that the athletes cannot create on their own, this film used dirty scenes and sickeningly violent imagery to conceal the fact that nothing interesting was taking place. Bugs crawling all over the supposedly abandoned hotel, human eyeballs floating in a briny solution, Jacob Goodnight’s diseased fingernails, and the occasional desiccated corpse of a homeless person all served to make me want to take a shower.
I never felt the delightful fight-or-flight impulse a good horror movie can inspire (I am a horror movie fan). I never jumped out of my seat, and I never feared for the well being of the Camp Crystal Lake rejects. I was uninvolved in this film from the moment the first scene ended, and endured it from that moment forward merely for the sake of this column.
On a character note, it was incredibly inconsistent for the “pimp/abuser/rapist” character to come to the rescue of his former working girl/punching bag (whom earlier in the film he dragged out of the shower, goozled, and presumably planned to rape again) and her pseudo-lesbian girlfriend, and his reasoning for doing so was pathetic. When the two other survivors asked him why he came back for them when he could have easily saved his own evil hide, he responded with “I didn’t want to walk out of here alone.” Bullshit! A man like him would have burned down the entire building with the two women still inside to escape alive. Hell, he would have tripped them while running away from Goodnight, just to slow big ol’ Jacob down enough to get himself away.
But suddenly he had a change of heart and became the hero. Just how gullible do they think I am? Gullible enough to buy a ticket to see this crap, I guess. (I can always claim the only reason I went to see the movie was to see how bad it could be, right?)
I will admit I was into the final showdown, primarily because I was seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, sensing my freedom from the nightmare of stupidity and boredom was about to come. The fight scene at the end of the film reminded me of Monday nights, because I was cheering for Kane to lose that match, too! The only way I related to the movie at all was that before it was over, I wanted somebody to rip MY eyes out.
Of course in fitting Vince McMahon fashion, one last scene following the main credits showed a stray dog lifting his leg and pissing in the now-open eye socket wound of Jacob Goodnight’s corpse. I don’t know if Vinnie Mac had anything to do with that, or if it was just a happy coincidence as far as he would be concerned, but it certainly FELT like a fitting end to a WWE movie.
Speaking of Mr. McMahon, I just have to include this quote from our own Michaelangelo McCullar , who was in fact quoting IP’s own Paul Sebert:
“The second WBF pay per view set a record for the lowest number of orders for an event available nationwide.
The XFL set the record for the lowest rated show on network television.
Now See No Evil is officially the only movie of 2006 to receive 100% rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Say what you will about Vincent Kennedy McMahon’s non-wrestling ventures, but at least he’s consistent.”
I implore you, my friends who bask in the light of common sense: don’t pay to see this movie, ever! Further, if you go to your buddy’s house a year from now and this schlock is on CineMax, help yourself to a gander at his magazine rack. Better yet, tell him you’ll come back tomorrow. You will NOT be able to get back the lost, wasted time you could have spent doing any one of a million things more enjoyable than watching See No Evil.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality.
p.s. – How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered?
