By Geno McGahee
Professional wrestling and movies don’t usually mix well, but there have been some exceptions to the rule. The Rock proved that the horrible acting that you see in wrestling can be improved and can translate into movie success with hits like “The Rundown” and “Walking Tall.” Glen Jacobs, better known as “Kane,” stars in this film as Jacob Goodnight. Yes, they named his character “Jacob Goodnight.” Now, that is a very small bad thing but when you add it on top of all the other bad things that make up this film, it makes for an overwhelmingly horrible watch.
Officer Frank Williams (Steven Vidler) was on the hunt for a serial killer that ripped out of the eyes of his victims. He would catch up with him, shoot him in the head, and the nightmare was over…or so he thought.
Now we have a group of juvenile delinquents that Williams looks after and figures that a good thing for them to do is to fix up a run down hotel, basically unsupervised . The Blackwell Hotel is so run down that you have to wonder just what these misfits could do to clean it up or repair it. It is ridiculous, and the characters are empty. There is zero character development in this film. Most of the kids are put there just to be killed by the enormous hook that Kane carries around. The writer Dan Madigan is/was a writer for the WWE, writing for Smackdown, so you knew that this movie didn’t have much of a chance of being anything but horrible.
We have a couple other things going on here too. Two of the kids have an issue, where one of the girls had snitched on one of the guys who is a drug dealer and a bad ass. We also have a couple of these rejects searching through secret parts of the hotel looking for some safe that holds a fortune. Since they are all basically separated and unsupervised (did I mention that?), they are easy prey for this giant with a hook. He kills them, throws them around, rips out their eyes, and makes mean faces at the camera. I like the character Kane (with the mask), and I give him an A for effort, but this production from start to finish is garbage. It is a stupid story, horribly written, with zero character development.
Goodnight takes a liking to one of the girls because of a crucifix tattoo on her back and he was raised by a religious nut mother, so he is a confused young man. He was terribly abused by his mother as a child, locked in a cage, and told of the evil of women and how you can see the evil and the soul through their eyes, which is why he cuts out the eyes of his victims.
Officer Williams comes face to face with the man that he thought he killed and he doesn’t win this time, getting grabbed by that pesky hook and yanked up into the ceiling, where he is killed. There is one fucking thing that really confuses me and irritates me about this film. Kane takes a shot to the head and the back of his head has a huge gash. When you get the close look at the wound, you realize that his head is full of maggots and other bugs. What the hell are they trying to tell us? Is he not human? I think what they are trying to tell us is that they have no fucking clue what they are doing and the WWE should concentrate on their wrestling product, which isn’t much better than this crap.
The only thing that I liked about this movie was the death of the bad guy. It was pretty neat to see him fall off of the hotel, and bounce off things until finally landing on the cement, but do you want to wait 80 minutes to see it? It’s not worth it. This movie might be enjoyable for really stupid people or people that love pro wrestling so much that they actually find it to be great to have one of the wrestlers on the big screen. I hated this film. I wanted my eyes ripped out! Kane, where were you when I needed you?!!!
Avoid this movie at all costs. It doesn’t get much worse than this people.
Scared Stiff Reviews: 1.5/10. Bad even for a movie with a pro wrestler as the star.
