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First thing’s first: This is not a movie review.
A review is something someone writes in an attempt to either convince you to see a movie or skip it. I don’t care if you see this movie or not. So there will definitely be spoilers. If you’re not into spoilers that’s totally cool, me neither, but this movie is like a decade old, so if you’ve gotten this far and are still reading but don’t want to be spoiled...that’s on you.
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So, yeah, “Spoilers, not a review, what is this, then?” you might be saying to yourself. Fair enough. This is my attempt to watch a movie that I have surprisingly very little interest in.
Surprising, because it involves two of my favorite things: Pro wrestlers and horror films. This should be right up my alley but I just never got around to it. So to celebrate October, the most candycoated murder month, I thought I’d venture back a decade and see what the relative fuss was all about.
Pre-viewing facts:
This movie spawned a sequel. That’s not saying much.
This movie’s gross income doubled the budget. That’s saying even less.
Critics did not go easy on this WWE production, and I think I may have met someone once that said of the movie “Yeah, I saw that movie,” but that’s all I know of it’s quality going in.
I’m not a critic, I’m a “tastemaker.” So it obviously makes total sense that’d I’d be watching a movie 10 years after it’s release. Happy Halloween!
Act I
It doesn’t bode well that as soon as the WWE Films logo came up that I immediately thought “Aw crap. This was a bad idea.”
Can cops just enter a house even if they hear screaming? What if it was coming from a loud television, like it just did mine? Can the cops walk in, guns drawn, opening random doors? Are the cops gonna do that to my place if I keep watching horror movies in the middle of the day at top volume?
I don’t know, but these cops did and that seems like a) maybe illegal, or at least it’s a weird grey area and b) a bad idea since so far this movie is half-assed religious shrines and blood on the walls of decrepit homes. And a trailer in woods with a similar motif...Ooooh, it actually was a screaming lady.
Well, she was screaming because her eyes have been removed. We know this from a gratuitous trolley shot that moves into the middle of her head. Kane showed up for a second to dispatch (hehehe) of the police with an axe, catching one dude in the face and lopping off the other one’s arm.
He got a shot off on Kane and then Kane left, I’m assuming because he forgot his mask.
A bus of troubled teen girls are going on a field trip to a local prison! They are warned not to “fraternize” with the inmates. I am interested in what is going on now.
The bus is just there to pick up some troubled teen boys to go with the troubled girls to go do good for the community or something. I think there’s 4 dudes and 4 gals but I’m not sure because they all look the same.
They show up at The Blackwell Hotel and one of the dudes is like “We left county for this?!?” like jail is way better than hanging out with four girls in a spooky building. Dude, you outnumber the staff, and one of them is the dude that got his arm chopped off earlier, this is gonna be super fun!
The troubled teens are sent to work renovating the hotel because it’s made of bugs having sex. So now they’re unsupervised and planning escapes. Michael is the name of one of the guys.
Kira is the name of one of the girls. They have a history together as he was her employer at some point in the past. Michael’s cleaning a bathroom that doubles as a serial killer weapons museum and I can’t get away from WWE’s dumb masturbation jokes even while watching a horror movie.
Two of the other guys are going on a treasure hunt! It seems there is a safe and one of them has blueprints to the hotel, so that will obviously lead them right to the hidden loot. Christine is also a girl and she beat up or killed her dad or step-dad or something and that’s why she’s in the movie. The dad person probably deserved it and she’ll probably win this in the end.
After throwing a hobo cup at a stray dog, remember this is in the middle of hotel, Michael decides to do some drugs. He offers drugs to some of the other professional renovators/prisoners. It’s cool though because they’re gluten-free, organic, anti-GMO, free-range artisanal drugs. This movie might take place in Park Slope.
Alright, timeout. There is a lot of swearing and nudity in this movie. I didn’t sign up for this. (Editor’s note: This whole thing was Graham’s idea.)
Act II
Quick roll call: Boy Chaperone and Girl Chaperone (chappies for short) are getting drunk together in a submarine (?) and Boy Chappie still only has one arm.
Michael and his guy friend who smuggled the drugs in are ready to do a drug party, the other two Indianapolis Jones’ are fake sleeping in order to later do a sneak-a-bout in hopes of finding money, The blonde girl is down to drug party and Christine is probably being angrily pensive somewhere.
One girl is naked in the dirtiest shower I’ve ever seen and I don’t even know where the fourth girl is or what she looks like. I have no idea where Old Lady Innkeeper is, but if she’s still around, I’d keep my eyes on her. Very suspicious that she’d just chill at the hotel with a bunch of weirdos and rats.
The Jones’, or the Treasure Twins as I call them now, find a dead body that is missing it’s eyes. In a panic, they get split up and uh,oh...KANE! And he has a giant metal hook that is attached to a chain for pulling purposes? Yup. Pulling purposes. Pulls Treasure Kid #1 right into the elevator by his hooked ankled.
This causes the elevator to elevate so Girl Chappie is off to investigate! She gets investigated right into the ceiling of the elevator by Kane (now hookless, still maskless) and he pulls her eyes out. He keeps them in the same jars that The Club kept Big E’s testes in.
After lazily attempting to rape the shower girl on his way to the drug party, Michael joins back up with his drug buddy and Blondie and Veggie (fourth girl is a vegetarian, I just recently learned) and they go looking for a cool drug party room.
Kira is having none of these hotel shenanigans and is all around just a bummer to be around, so Christine tells her to escape she must jump through a hole in the wall and above all, have fun!
So Kira goes to The Kitchen Of The Damned and hurts herself multiple times just being in there. This alerts Hooked Kane and he shows up in one of those hotel mini elevators. What’s it called? A lazy Susan? A hobnobber? A Lift-Ease?
I can’t remember but around this time Guy Chappie and Treasure Kid #2 deduce that GC shot Kane in the head at the beginning of the movie and Kira has religious tattoos so he’s probably not gonna kill her, just take out her eyes, right after instructing TK #2 and Christine to beat feet outta the building, Guy Chaps gets fish hooked through the ceiling, de-eyed, then dropped back down.
Michael and his drug posse find a suitable room to experiment with narcotics in but WHOOPS! Kane is watching through one-way mirrors. Kane’s eyes are pretty messed up looking, so I don’t know if he’s trying to get some new, fancier eyes, or if his motivation is he just hates other people’s eyes.
He left his last victim eyeless but alive because she had religious tattoos, Guy Chappie said. And I guess he’s into religious tattoos but it doesn’t seem to me that he likes religion, at all. But like, if he hates religion so much why is he NOT killing the victims with God Tats?
Or does he just love religion so much that he couldn’t possibly kill someone with a cross inked on their back, but living life as a murderous psychopath is acceptable? And who signed off on this three day field trip to a building that I can only assume has had numerous failed inspections?
It seems to me that Kane’s costume for this movie cost next to nothing. He looks basically like he does in everyday life. Bald, raggedy clothes, weird eyes and face, tall. He may have fake fingernails on but I don’t know enough about fingernails to say one way or the other.
We are given insight to his mental state through shaky filmography and the pride he takes in the cleanliness of his living and work spaces. We learn that he’s very indecisive since he can’t seem to pick a place to keep Kira and stick with it. Also, I’m about halfway through this movie and it sucks.
Act III
Kane’s a big fan of dragging people around and bumping their heads in the process, but also keeping them in big dog cages. This is where he’s recently stored Kira, and many other un-eyed victims.
Richie, who it turns out is Treasure Kid #1, is still alive though, and he’s just about to wiggle free when Kane bites his kneecaps off and makes sensible earmuffs out of them. I’m just kidding he ripped his eyes out.
Drug Mule and Veggie are off doing a good sex, while Michael and Blondie continue to be on drugs in the slightly-less-haunting-but-definitely-filthier bar of The Overlook Hotel. Blondie, using dead Girl Chappie’s cellphone she stole earlier, calls her sister to gossip about drug parties, and the possibility of more drug parties to come.
While in the bathroom Kane gives Kira a dirty baptism that looked like it smelled like burnt piggy banks but is distracted by DM and Veggie’s sex stuff so he jumps through a mirror and gives chase.
He’s without hook, so this gives them time to not escape at all, because Kane can also just drop you out of a window and severely injure your arm. That’s what happened to Veggie while she and DM attempted to repel down 5 or 6 stories, and to honest, where they were escaping to looked exactly like where they were escaping from, so I’m not sure what the plan was.
Regardless, it didn’t work. Drug Mule (just found out his name is Russell) gets his eyes taken and Veggie gets eaten by stray dogs. Now there’s like three dogs.
Blondie and Michael are in the middle of Act 1 of a date rape, when Kane runs in and starts singing “EYE SCREAM! YOU SCREAM! WE ALL SCREAM FOR gimme your eyes, dudes” with his body language.
Everyone breaks into a spontaneous game of hide-and-seek and wouldn’cha know it? Stealing that cellphone came back to bite Blondie in the butt. It rings, Kane hears it and crams it down her gullet and possibly kills her.
The real mystery will be if Blondie accidently throat butt-dials someone, now that Girl Chappie is dead, who’s gonna pay that bill? I can’t imagine what neck roaming charges are these days, but I bet they were astronomical 10 years ago.
Since Kane has like 4 trip-wires he knows that Christine, Michael, and Treasure Kid #2 are all together and on the floor below him. They all have weapons now, two guns and a big metal pipe for Michael. They are so ready for Kane. Bring It.
They are easily defeated when Kane Kool-Aid Guys his way through the wall and beats TWO GUNS AND A GIANT PIPE with an axe. It’s a good axe, but come on! Oh, and I guess one of the guns was a stun gun and not a bullets gun, but still.
TK2 and Christine narrowly escape using a broken elevator and find Kane’s eye room. It’s filled with eyes, charts of eyes, books about eyes, an old jukebox that only plays songs with “Eye” or “Eyes” or “I” in the titles, things to put eyes into, and other eye-related contraptions.
They then find Kira in an adjacent room but can’t break her free from her cage, even though it looks like it’ was built out of chicken wire and soiled Fisher Price toys. Not even “built,” more like “leaned against each other.” So they bolt and Kane walks in and just kinda squat stares at Kira.
We get some flashbacks, but all I can gather from them is, because Lil’ Kane was touching himself and looking at old timey photos of Suicide Girls, he got locked in a cage with old timey photos of Suicide Girls and Lady Paul Bearer was SO NOT INTO ANY OF THAT even though it was her idea.
OH SNAP! I knew it! So while Kane was off killing TK2 the Old Lady Innkeeper shows up and it turns out she’s Lady Paul Bearer! Well, It was quite a mystery but I solved it. By continuing to watch the movie, against all my instincts. I’m a hero, some would say.
So LPB’s all “Why haven’t you killed everyone, yet? God said to!” and Kira’s like “Uh, that’s not how god works. I’m a Millennial! ” and Kane starts singing Peter’s Denial which I thought was a weird selection.
Kane finally realizes that his mom is kind of a bitch and kills her, but he’s still super into regular, non-familial murder, so he drags Kira to yet another location in the hotel. Michael finally wakes up from his drug nap to stop Kane from double chokeslamming Kira and Christine.
Everyone runs around some more, until the troubled kids manage to put a pipe through Kane’s eye and then he fell out a window and then died because they showed his heart stop. This is minutes after revealing that his brain was made of maggots so I’m just impressed he was able to use a pulling hook that well.
3 people survived the movie which is entirely too many people and a dog peed in an eye socket in the end. But I think the real moral of the story is that while religion can be a good thing, sometimes we have to fight literal demons in order to make it through this crazy world. Sometimes those demons are Kane, but Kane’s fighting his own personal demons, ya know?
A dumb waiter. It’s called a dumb waiter. Dammit, I can’t believe I forgot that.
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