One Man's Story of His See No Evil Opening Adventure
Posted by MSD on 05.20.2006
411's MSD talks about the experience of going to watch See No Evil on opening night...
Tombstone piledriver, my designed assault
I'm the product of the bottom of a mindless thought
Psychotic off of chronic mixed with rage and lust
Stompin all opposition til they brains is mush Tray-Dee from the Eastsidaz - "Big Red Machine"
I saw protestors!
Friday night March 19th, the Randolph cinemas are swarming with people. Cops direct traffic at the intersection, herding carloads of eager movie goers into the secondary parking lots across the street. Crowds mingle slowly across four lines of highway, chatting incessantly the entire time. Meanwhile, protestors litter the sidewalk beyond Rick's Café brandishing their disapproval with signboards and menacing glares. All this chaos, all this commotion but not for the show I came to see. This is one mans story of his See No Evil opening night adventure.
See No Evil
2006
WWE Films
Directed by Gregory Dark
Eight teens. One weekend. One serial killer
March 19th was also DaVinci Code opening night, so I attribute much of the aforementioned nonsense to this film. People were literally getting turned away from the door for showings of the movie three hours later, so that shit was probably packed and sealed days ago. So I got to experience the thrill and adrenaline rush of a packed theatre on opening night, but without all the horrible line waiting. It also helps to mention I was drunk as phuckk with 2 ½ grams of shrooms in my system and enough hydro plant to power the entire south shore.
I estimate the theatre was at 75% of its full capacity, so the movie had a good turnout. Not big enough that we all couldn't sit together, but enough to give the theatre a buzz. Walking past the large DaVinci Code lines in the lobby, with the local police lingering about didn't even frighten me for some reason. Nothing could blow my high tonight. And I'll tell you, those movie posters hanging in the lobby that glow and change pictures are a real trip, even without the d rugs.
Coming Attractions are my favorite part of the show, and the one for the new Rock movie blew me away. It's called "Gridiron Gang", it looks like a cross between Friday Night Lights and Oz and it's supposedly based on a true story. Through pupils the size of silver dollars, this movie looked great to me. On to the show.
No remorse from the force as the blood pour forth
I endorse only sports of the dangerous sort
Seven three, first degree, maniac unseen
And can't nobody stop the Big Red Machine
WWE Films made the picture and WWE Films will make sure you remember that WWE Films made this movie. They show up three ½ times in the opening credits (with "starring Kane" as the ½). Stylistically, it reminds me of a glossy music video and the opening shots I felt were purposely against the grain. Like weird angles and close ups that just screamed "look at the fancy way I film feet walking!" But seriously, that's probably the hallucinogens talking.
Show opens with two tough cops investigating a potential crime scene, when screams suddenly draw them in without waiting for back up. They find a girl stumbling around blindly in the dank quarters, and slowly (and horribly) we learn both her eyes were viciously gouged out. JUSTTHENKANEATTACKS and chops down a cop with his big axe! The second cop loses his arm from an axe swipe, with gratuitous camera shots of it writhing pathetically on the ground beside him, still holding the flashlight. The cop manages one gun shot that hits Kane in the head and takes him out. Weird, buggy colors and visual effects fade the cop from consciousness. The crowd liked the sudden burst of action, people die gruesomely and they've managed to reveal very little of Kane so far - Alien style.
The cop lives but he has a prosthetic arm (sounds corny but it was sensible and realistic) and he moves on to helping incarcerated youths. Here we enter the meat of the story. A joint bus ride between co-ed inmates reveals the main characters, with convenient little freeze screens and captions that give us their names and criminal convictions. They're all stupid high-school age punks with stuff like "computer fraud", "assault" and "possession" but they flesh their personalities out enough in just a few minutes that you get a good feel for them. They're all archetypes generic enough that everybody knows one. And they're all gonna die.
As some kind of work release program, they're being commissioned to clean a huge burned out wreck that used to be a hotel. It's the perfect setting for this type of movie cuz there are a million different rooms to play with and unlimited maze-like potential. But realistically, I don't know what you can expect a shiftless, untrained group of 6 or 7 people to accomplish in this huge disgusting pit. You'd need Cleaning Lady for a year.
OK, so we have a bit more interaction between the inmates and two escorts (one woman to watch the girls, and prosthetic-arm cop to watch the guys) which promotes character development and a sense of history between them. You got the good boy and girl, bad boy and girl and the set stuck in between. When they break for night fall (cuz I guess they're actually gonna SLEEP here) they all split up to do their own thing. The bad boys and girls wanna sneak away and smoke some pot, the good girl wants to help the stuck-in between girl escape, and the only black kid wants to help the computer nerd "find a treasure hidden for thirty years". So basically, everybody splits up and has their own reasons for investigating forbidden areas. Here's where the party starts.
Kane lives in the walls, and behind two-way mirrors with little bells in his chamber that work like a primitive lo-jacks and pinpoint peoples exact location when they're disturbed. He hunts with a big hook and chain that he enjoys dragging people with and slamming them haphazardly into walls and door jams. The movie does a good job of building the tension, with plenty of false-starts, fake outs and red herrings. But nothing is completely random not even the starving dog that wanders into the yard from out of nowhere. They build up the suspense by having the aspiring treasure hunters find a bunch of dead homeless people with their eyes gouged out. The murders proceed from there.
Some standard fare, I think he removed the eyeballs from living victims at least twice in the movie. But they had some darkly humorous murders too, like the bitch that got the cell phone forced down her throat or the girl who was ravaged by a pack of dogs (that got a big reaction from the crowd). But it wasn't the manner of death that received most emphasis, it was how Kane snuck up on his victims. Most of the movie was also very dark, grainy and grimy a cross between Texas Chainsaw Massacres claustrophobic chase scenes, Nightmare on Elm Streets boiler room photography and House of 1000 Corpses cluttered, junk-filled setting.
Flashbacks put Kane's tormented upbringing into perspective (he had a bad childhood nuff said) and explain the weird bug outs he's been experiencing recently on WWE telecasts. The jittering camera angles, and trippy special effects really made me feel like I was going mad. Wifey was shook, and almost wanted to leave when Kane started hacking down the elevator door with our heroes trapped inside. The rest of the theatre reacted in kind. You never know who's gonna go next, cuz every character received the same treatment and all seemed expendable. But it's probably not coincidence that the white trash punk with the Stone-Cold like attitude ultimately survives.
They divulge Jacob Goodnights horrible past further, and tie it together with the new hotel curator before breaking down into the grand finale which pits the surviving kids against the homicidal maniac. I won't tell you how it ends, but I promise you it's very graphic. It also doesn't leave much room for a sequel, unless Kane is more the Jason Vorhees type which they kind of alluded to with the maggot filled bullet hole in his head.
Overall, it was a very fun and entertaining movie for its genre. The story was somewhat realistic and believable (more than any Friday the 13th or Halloween, for example) and the acting was too. One minor complaint was that Kane's sheer physical size wasn't accentuated enough. Remember Kevin Nash in Punisher? He looked like a brick wall. Here, some of the scenery dwarfed Kane in my eyes. Also, most of the movie soundtrack was rap-driven so I appreciate that as well. Wrestling fans got to see him execute a few choke slams, and Vince McMahon-like fans get to see him masturbate as well. Most of the so-called "scary and/or upsetting" topics they discussed have been seen regularly in the ring I remember children eerily singing together in a PPV package before, and all Vince's recent talk about religion and God are here too. Ultimately, I enjoyed myself tremendously the rest of he theatre seemed to too and the movie wasn't long enough to bore anybody (it clocked in around 1 ½). I liked it a lot, but I could've just been really high. And I definitely think Jacob Goodnight could whup Jason, Freddy or Michael if they ever had a Fatal 4-Way. This is MSD signing off from another enriching movie review here at 411Mania.
