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See No Evil
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Lions Gate Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Andreas Petersen (5th October 2009). |
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The Film
 I remember when I first saw the trailer for "See No Evil," directed by Gregory Dark and written by Dan Madigan, I was in film school. Back in those days, the mere concept of a horror movie based around a WWE wrestler would “offend” my “good tastes”, and I would scoff it off and proceed to talk about how good "Crash" (2004) was. Thankfully, I’ve done some growing up in the past years, and I’ve gotten to a point in my life where not only do I see that "Crash" is melodramatic porn, but also to a point where I can get excited about a movie silly enough to have a WWE star hacking up teenagers. So with that I went into "See No Evil" with more than an open mind. The movie’s plot is classic enough: A cop (Steven Vidler) has an encounter with a psychopathic squatter (Kane) at an abandoned house where he loses an arm, but plugs a bullet into the head of the murderer, but still somehow gets away. Four years later the cop brings a group of juvenile delinquents to do community service at an old abandoned hotel, and surprise surprise, the murder is squatting in the upper rooms. What follows is your by-the-numbers teen slasher flick movie, with kids getting picked off one by one, some even right after sexual activity. The killer in this movie, named Jacob Goodnight, uses methods we’ve seen before. He has a hook at the end of a chain, he has an axe, he has his arms. He basically runs around like a dumb oaf, picking off each kid one at a time. Here’s where the movie actually disappoints. When a movie with this premise comes out, it better go for it all, or go home. The actual gore level in the film is pretty unimpressive, and fail to live up to the originality of the kills. When a vegan woman is strung up and fed to dogs, I want to see that! Unfortunately, the camera cuts pretty much every time something juicy is about to transpire. So in the end, you have a big brutish dude stalk some teenagers in a hotel, and that is basically it. With no real payoff to the kills, the film gets pretty monotonous, even at the extremely short running time. Somehow, they made a 300 pound wrestler killing young kids boring. The film does delve into some pretty dark territory in parts, but it was hardly enough to keep me interested, especially the when the movie sports a paper-thin plot involving Goodnight’s back story. After being interested in the movie for a few years, I’m sorry to say that it came up short. Some of the gore is OK, but the pace of the movie just doesn’t service the film. A few good bits of gore is hardly worth watching the whole film for. A good horror movie is a perfect storm of gore, characters, and story. Either that or a whole truck-load of gore. Sadly, "See No Evil" was neither of these.
Video
"See No Evil" is presented in a 1.78:1 1080p 24/fps HD widescreen transfer mastered with AVC MPEG-4 compression, and the results are mixed. The quality of the picture is pretty decent, with no real distractions occurring on screen, and that is saying something, considering how the entire film is pretty much shot in a sepia tone. Visually, the film wasn’t that interesting, so it never really had a chance to shine in terms of the transfer. However, what’s there works.
Audio
"See No Evil" is presented in an English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 surround sound transfer mixed at 48kHz/24-bit, and I was decently impressed with the effort brought forth here. Sound is as key to a horror movie as the villain, and in the case of "See No Evil," the sounds was scarier than anything I was looking at. The sound of Goodnight’s hooks impaling faces, or dogs eating vegans, all of it sounded pretty wet. At the same time, all the little nuances of an old decrepit hotel came through, with creaky doors and floor boards. Optional subtitles are included in English, English for hearing impaired and Spanish.
Extras
"See No Evil" comes with a few extras in the form of two audio commentary tracks, behind-the-scenes featurettes, Storyboard-to-Film comparison, promotional videos, a teaser, trailer and a bonus trailer. They are detailed below: First up is a feature-length audio commentary with director Gregory Dark and screenwriter Dan Madigan. This lifeless commentary is pretty uninteresting, with Dark and Madigan sounding like two old dads instead of a creative team behind a horror movie. They talk about the kids, what the weather was like, so on and so forth. Overall, a very uninspired commentary track with more than its fair share of silent stretches. Next is an audio commentary with star Kane and producer Jed Blaugrund, and thankfully, this one is better than the other track. Here, Kane seems to be pretty loose, making funny comments and recounting funny anecdotes of how no one really liked him on set, or rather everyone was too scared of him. Unfortunately, this track also had some long stretches where no one really said anything. "Do You See The Sin? The Making of See No Evil" featurette which runs for 13 minutes and 2 seconds, is the disc’s main making-of. Here, producers of the movie dare compare the film to classic staples in horror history such as "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974) and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984). I found this sort of obnoxious, not only because you are comparing a movie to an established classic, but these two films are immensely better than "See No Evil." Also, there is a unintentionally hilarious part in which the director talks about how Kane’s face is capable of showing immense emotion and humanism. Pretty uninteresting stuff. "Kane: Journey Into Darkness" featurette which runs for 2 minutes and 59 seconds, acts as a summation of Kane’s character in WWE. We see Kane light people on fire and pile drive women, and honestly, this made me want to trade "See No Evil" in for some sort of Kane: Best of DVD. Storyboard-to-Film comparison, which runs for 1 minute and 21 seconds. This interesting feature has the aforementioned dog-eating scene, but during the scene, if you just hit your angle button, you can switch between the storyboard, the regular scene itself, or a side-by-side comparison. I’d like to see this feature on a movie that is actually good. "Behind the Evil: WWE Features" are a series of 10 promotional videos that aired alongside WWE events, and chalk up the film. They are largely uninteresting, and seem to present a film that I didn’t even see, because the interviews selected would have led people to believe that this is the scariest/most screwed up movie of all time. They are: - "Overall Plot" which runs for 1 minute and 24 seconds, in which actors and crew explain the amazingly intricate plot of a film involving a giant ape swinging a chain around. - "Jacob Profile" which runs for 1 minute and 30 seconds, in which production teams talk about the reasoning behind Goodnight’s modes of murder. - "Gore Factor" which runs for 1 minute and 14 seconds, talks to crew about how amazingly “messed up” the movie is, and how it isn’t afraid to show the gore. If Lionsgate could just mail me that movie, that would be great. - "Set Design" which runs for 1 minute and 20 seconds, in which set designers are interviewed, and talk about how they think the set is another character of the film. - "Working With Kane" which runs for 1 minute and 20 seconds, in which the actors of the film talk about how terrifying it was to work with Kane. I can’t tell how staged all of this is. - "World Premiere" which runs for 1 minute and 38 seconds, in which WWE fans and athletes attend the premiere of the film and talk about how it is unlike any movie ever released. Once again, the film is compared to classics horror films. - "WWE Superstars’ Favorite Scenes" which runs for 1 minute and 30 seconds, in which the stars pick arbitrary scenes that were their favorites. - "Fan Reactions" which runs for 1 minute, in which a bunch of film attendees make hyperbolic statements about how scary the film is. - "Kane vs. Jacob: Who’s Scarier?" which runs for 1 minute and 33 seconds, in which Kane’s “madness” is talked up again. - "Make Up/Special Effects" which runs for 1 minute and 32 seconds, in which the movie’s make up crew talks about how Kane is that ugly in real life, and actually required very little make up beyond dirt and grime. The film also includes a teaser trailer for the film which runs for 57 seconds, and a theatrical trailer that runs for 40 seconds. Lastly, the disc includes a bonus trailer for "My Bloody Valentine 3D," which runs for 1 minute and 25 seconds.
Overall
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