Halloween Horrorfest 2018: SEE NO EVIL 2 (2014)

When I was living in Ridgewood, I used to frequently visit the K-Mart on Metropolitan Avenue and then go to the nearby Arby’s for lunch.  One of the joys of these visits was sorting through the five and ten dollar DVD bins and finding cheap-ass ‘instant collections.’  Sure, most of these were questionable grey-market slapdash things from second rate imprints like Echo Bridge and Mill Creek...but you also got 4-film collections from actual studios.  That’s how I ended up with a copy of See No Evil, a slasher film from Lionsgate and the ‘Is that still around?’ subdivision of WWE, WWE Films.  It was on a collection with both Stir of Echoes* films, and that’s why I bought it.

See No Evil...is a really, really bad film.  It’s also one of the filthiest, and not because it’s rude or directed by porn auteur Gregory Dark; it takes the grimy aesthetic of that first, iconic Saw and goes way overboard with it.  I swear, it looks like you’re watching the entire film through a thick sluice of garbage water. 

See No Evil 2 is directed by The Great and Terrible Soska Sisters--who pretty much should be declared my Queens of Halloween 2018 between this and American Mary--and is an improvement.  For most of its run time, it’s a vast improvement because Jen and Sylvia know they’re making a VOD genre flick, embrace that aesthetic, cast the film with charismatic actors, and just. Let. Fly.

This is an energetic, fun slasher sequel that has almost nothing in its head but to be entertaining.  Sure, the last fifteen minutes may slow down too much--pretty much after one very shocking twist--but the Soskas keep the pace going and finds inventive ways to keep interest.  It helps that the script by Nathan Brooks and Bobby Lee Darby spends time with our six pack of potential dead meat; in ten minutes, I feel I know more about the characters than I did about the faceless actors that were stalked and slashed in the original during its whole running time.  Setting their scenario in a morgue gives us some novel-looking weapons for Goodnight to wield.  Hell, there’s even a plausible reason for this slasher to use his signature hooks...and a novel way to incorporate them.

I do want to single out Katharine Isabelle, who is so on point here.  Playing the Kinky Girl in some sort of weird pseudo-school girl outfit, she does some things that are patently ridiculous like wiggling on top of Goodnight’s corpse to entice her boyfriend, then spends the bulk of the film literally running and screaming in a way that’s knowingly comic.  Every second she’s on screen is a joy, and I think it should be Law that Isabelle appear in every Soska Sisters film from now on; hell, put her in a little postage-stamp sized picture frame in the lower left hand corner having lunch or something in Rabid...

Not that the other actors are without merit.  Danielle Harris and Kaj-Erik Eriksen provide an excellent spine as the lead couple, and the rest manage to breathe life in what could otherwise have been two-dimensional stereotypes--you know, like in the first one.

However, this is not an unqualified rave.  Brooks and Darby do seem to fall prey to the Rob Zombie Halloween trope of trying to make our villain ‘understandable.’  Glenn Jacobs’ Goodnight was this silent, monolithic presence in the first film, but here our writers seem insistent on casting the killer as a....product of abuse?  They even have Jacobs speak in spots, which doesn't feel right.  Don’t get me wrong--I used to watch WWE when Jacobs was doing a lot of speaking as his in-ring character Kane and found him an engaging performer (He even had a propensity for comedy, which I found pretty amazing)...but a character like Jacob Goodnight should be a force of nature, a human-shaped grizzly bear, and not have the audience’s sympathy.  And the film could have done without the John Carpenter-esque last five or so minutes; I understand it is to give us a breather before the credits roll, but the shot outside at the gates of the morgue which reveals the fate of our Survivor would have been the perfect ending.

See No Evil made me want to forget that I spent approximately a dollar and a quarter in obtaining this.  See No Evil 2...made me glad I took the time to watch it.  If WWE Films decided to continue the franchise, I wouldn’t complain, especially if the Soskas or somebody with a similar energy and sense of humor helmed it.

You can still head over to my Twitter Page to vote on tomorrow’s Halloween Horrorfest Movie of the Day.  I’d really appreciate your vote tonight, since as of this writing only one person has chimed in.  The Big Finale is coming up, so be sure to be part of the ride!

*--Yes, there was a Stir of Echoes 2.  No, you do not want to see it.  It’s truly low-budget wretchedness.