Gregory Dark holds a distinguished place atop the pantheon of porn auteurs. His work in such groundbreaking opuses as New Wave Hookers and Let Me Tell Ya 'Bout Black Chicks made him a lucrative brand name in the hardcore world. From there, it was only a small leap to directing videos for the likes of Britney Spears, and now helming See No Evil, a punishingly awful slasher film with monosyllabic banter dreadful enough to make viewers yearn for the sophisticated repartee (and fucking noises) of earlier Dark efforts like White Bunbusters.
A joyless vehicle for wrestler Kane—a former third-grade teacher who has wrestled under such delicious monikers as The Christmas Creature, Unabomb, and Dr. Isaac Yankem DDS (an evil dentist, apparently)—the film strands eight juvenile delinquents with roughly one redeeming facet between them (the token hippie is nice to animals) in a spooky abandoned hotel with a deranged mass murderer. Kane plays that mad slasher, a baby-faced goon who, like many slashers before him, takes great offense at sexy teenagers drinking, smoking weed, having casual sex, and generally behaving like sexy teenagers. Inspired equally by the hectoring of his insane, Jesus-obsessed mother and the demands of the plot, Kane punishes such transgressions by tossing his hormonally-charged victims around like rag dolls before plucking out their eyeballs. In today's hyper-competitive marketplace, even deranged murderers have to specialize.
See No Evil comes coated in several layers of sleaze and grime; it's a dimly lit, indifferently executed Z-grade horror movie every bit as nasty and unpleasant as Dark's movies for the trenchcoat set. The queasy juxtaposition of sex and violence is constant, and the acting, directing, and production values all fall somewhere between porn and direct-to-video schlock. Once Dark establishes the film's brutally simple premise—photogenic kids get graphically slaughtered—all that's left is a dreary waiting game to see who makes it out alive. It's never a promising sign when the participation of WWE mastermind Vince McMahon, who serves as executive producer, represents the classiest aspect of an enterprise.