Tagline: This summer, evil gets raw.
Seven feet tall. Four hundred pounds. A rusty steel plate screwed into his skull and razor-sharp fingernails that pluck out his victims’ eyes. Reclusive psychopath Jacob Goodnight is holed up in the long-abandoned and rotting Blackwell Hotel, alone with his nightmares until eight petty criminals show up for community service duty along with the cop who put a bullet in Jacob’s head four years ago. When one of their own is kidnapped by the killer and her fate uncertain, the remaining lawbreakers must fight this indestructible force of nature with a violent score to settle.
“See No Evil” stars World Wrestling Entertainment superstar Kane. The movie was directed by Gregory Dark. One of the most popular wrestlers in World Wrestling Entertainment, Kane has made a name for himself as a bad-boy in an industry already teeming with out-sized personalities. At 7 feet tall and over 300 pounds, the volatile wrestler made his first appearance in 1997 and wasted no time in breaking all the rules: during one broadcast, he set RAW announcer Jim Ross on fire; and he stunned audiences when he “tombstoned” WWE CEO Linda McMahon, effectively picking her up and dropping her on her head. In light of this penchant for savagery, it comes as no surprise that Kane would take on the role of Jacob Goodnight, the unstoppable homicidal psychopath in Lionsgate’s grisly horror film, See No Evil, as his first foray onto the silver screen.
“There are a lot of similarities between myself and Jacob Goodnight,” says Kane. “We both had what some people would say are horrible childhoods. And we both grew up to be extremely large powerful men who can now do whatever we want to do. The only difference is that Jacob Goodnight does what he does on a movie screen and I do what I do in the ring.”
A hulking mass with razor-sharp, pointed fingernails and a steel plate embedded in his bare skull (a patch-up from a past gun-shot wound), Jacob lives in squalor in an abandoned hotel. But when eight juvenile delinquents arrive to help clean the hotel in exchange for reduced sentences, Jacob hunts them down one by one through a maze of decrepit hallways and rooms. Seeing sin in the eyes of his victims, he kills them and plucks out their eyes, which he collects in specimen jars.
“I think fans of Kane are going to love Jacob Goodnight because he’s so brutal, so violent and so sadistic. It’s a natural fit,” says director Gregory Dark.
Joel Simon, President of WWE Films, sees Kane’s move into the film industry as a natural extension of his massive popularity. “In Hollywood, the first thing you need to find is an audience for your film,” says Simon. “Kane has that audience. American viewers tune into WWE shows every single week, 52 weeks a year. We have millions and millions of people who watch us weekly around the world.”
And to be sure, WWE audiences don’t expect to see Kane in a romantic comedy. “He can be a pretty extreme, horrific guy, so his fans obviously expect something in the horror genre,” explains Simon. “We were lucky to find a story that suits him as well as it does.”
A non-stop bloodbath that features a string of gruesome death scenes, SEE NO EVIL will undoubtedly please both devotees of the horror genre and Kane fans. Jacob Goodnight hunts primarily with a meat hook and chain, although he’s not averse to using an axe, or, as he does in one sequence, forcefeeding a cell phone down a victim’s throat. “The movie’s definitely more graphic than people will be expecting,” says Christina Vidal, who plays Christine, one of the six unfortunate delinquents. “It’s just blood and body parts and nastiness all over the place.”
No stranger to violence, Kane was unfazed by the severed limbs and buckets of blood that adorned the set. “Personally, I find the gore in the movie comforting. I relate to it,” he says. “It’s like living out some of my dreams on the big screen.”
Apart from the scares and the gore, however, SEE NO EVIL distinguishes itself by portraying Jacob Goodnight as more human than monster. As the story progresses, flashbacks and surprise twists reveal the reasons for Jacob’s psychosis, transforming him into a more complex character than most movie boogey-men. “The Jacob Goodnight character has much more depth than characters like Jason or Freddy Kreuger,” says Dark. “We get an understanding of how he arrived at the place that he did. As a killer, he becomes real and relatable to the audience, which makes him much more frightening than simply a supernatural killer.”
Adds Kane, “Jacob Goodnight, like myself, is scarier because he’s real. He’s a living, breathing, human being who does what he does because he likes to do it.”
Since Jacob has very little dialogue throughout the course of the film, the burden fell on the director to effectively develop the character with images, something that came easily thanks to Dark’s background in music videos. But Dark ultimately credits Kane’s performance as the most effective tool in communicating Jacob’s story. “Kane as an actor is incredibly talented,” says Dark. “All I had to do was give him a note and he would adjust immediately. He became so invested in the violence and the angst and the insanity of the character that it just showed on his face.”
“I’m a firm believer that actions speak louder than words,” says Kane. “In the ring I speak with my fists and with my feet. Jacob just speaks with an axe and a chain.”
While he found a film shoot to be less physically demanding than a professional wrestling match, Kane admits that the actor’s trade has its unique challenges. “It’s easier to go into the ring than it is on set,” he says. “In the WWE, you have 30,000 people screaming your name or hating your guts; whereas here, there’s no audience. I had to look inside for my motivation.”
Kane’s wrestling expertise, however, was an asset during the action-packed shoot: he performed his own stunts and encouraged his co-stars to do the same. Luke Pegler, who plays Michael, a hardened drug dealer, was so impressed with Kane’s skills that he allowed Kane to simulate smashing his face against a wall during a brutal, pivotal scene. “It looks like he’s crushing my skull in his hands and smashing my face against the wall, but in reality I’m not feeling a thing,” avows Pegler. “I felt completely safe. He’s a master.”
Still, Kane still manages to frighten his fellow actors on set. “He scares the crap out of me,” admits Michael J. Pagan, who plays Tye. “I didn’t really have to act in the scenes or worry about my motivation. When he came crashing through a wall, all I wanted to do was run.”
Due to Kane’s naturally menacing look, Dark and prosthetics supervisor Jason Baird felt little need to alter his appearance with make-up and prosthetics. “Kane’s look by itself is extraordinarily frightening and quite unusual,” explains the director. “You don’t have to do much. He already has a completely shaved head. He’s seven-feet tall and he’s huge. All we had to do was make him really filthy and add a few cuts and scars.”
SEE NO EVIL was shot primarily at Australia’s Movie World Studios, with a cast comprised of both American and Australian actors. Many of the hotel interiors where Kane hunts his prey were constructed on a sound stage, with movable sets that could be repositioned to create an endless labyrinth of hallways. Due to Kane’s uncommon height, director of photography Ben Nott and production designer Michael Rumpf had to tailor the ceilings and doorway arches to accommodate the actor. “You see more ceiling detail in this film than you see in most other films because Kane is so tall and we’re always looking up at him,” says Nott.
Additionally, Nott used several lighting and photographic techniques to visually embellish Jacob’s character. Hard top lights often bury Kane’s eyes in shadow, creating the impression of a “hollow shell of man, with a soul in there somewhere in the dark.”
For Jacob’s highly subjective point-of-view shots, Nott used a swing-shift lens, which shifts focus across the photographic plane. “The effect is that Jacob never sees the world like we see the world,” explains Nott. “His world is only partly in focus.”
In a departure from the current trend in horror films, Dark and Rumpf designed the film using a warm color palette, with ochres, yellows and warm greens dominating the sets and lighting. “Warm colors never let the eye rest, and that adds to the viewer’s discomfort,” says Dark. “They’re more realistic and flesh-like and gory by nature. A lot of genre films resort to a monochromatic, comic-book look. But this is quite the opposite. You see all the gristle and messiness of life.”
Dark also relied on almost three hundred different effects shots to choreograph the non-stop violence. “Because of my history in music videos, my movies are not very slow-moving,” says the director. “They’re very contemporary. I understand the MTV audience. This movie is fast-paced, fast-cut, and there are a lot of interesting stunts in it.”
Kane, in particular, is pleased with the result. “WWE fans and hardcore horror fans are gonna love this movie,” he proclaims. “Because of all the sick, demented stuff that I do on TV, it’s nothing compared to what I do when I get on a 30-foot screen.”
These production notes provided by Lionsgate Films.
See No Evil
Starring: Kane, Christina Vidal, Samantha Noble, Luke Pegler, Rachael Taylor, Ponny McNamee, Tiffany Lamb, Cecilly Polson
Directed by: Gregory Dark
Screenplay by: Dan Madigan
Release Date: May 19th, 2006
MPAA Rating: R for strong gruesome violence and gore throughout, language, sexual content and some drug use.
Studio: Lionsgate Films
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $15,032,800 (81.6%)
Foreign: $3,381,432 (18.4%)
Total: $18,414,232 (Worldwide)