See No Evil 2

And How We Don't Support Incarcerated Women

I tend to think that the best reason to sequelize or remake a film is because you can top it. I hate hearing people remaking sacred movies and saying they wish to make a “companion piece” or they want to “honor the memory of the original.” Have some confidence, guys. Show me something new. Otherwise, I can just watch the original.

Which mostly means that it’s worth following a truly awful film because that way, your aspirations should 100% be to fix what is broken and create a piece of art that stands alone. So forgive me for the high hopes that the Soska Sisters would hit a fastball down the middle in this WWE-produced sequel to the barely-remembered slasher “See No Evil” in 2006. The history of slasher sequels is populated by a number of movies far better than they should be. As such, “See No Evil 2” could have been the start of a promising brand name for the flailing WWE Films. The original movie was helmed by Gregory Dark, who previously had experience in the realm of porn films. The Soska Sisters, who bravely delved into the world of body modification non-judgmentally in “American Mary”, had to be a step up.

I had seen “See No Evil”, but I can’t say my memories were fond. If anything, I remember it as a standard meat-and-potatoes programmer, one that had the temerity to scuttle franchise plans by ending the movie with the killer’s destroyed head, a dog urinating in his caved-in eye cavity. Can’t really follow that! But somehow, Jacob Goodnight returned. Eight years had passed since the original, and suddenly the behemoth played by wrestler Kane was well enough to bless us with another rampage.

The approach here is to pick up directly where the first film left off (which presupposes a lot of audience members have a recollection of “See No Evil”, which grossed $18 million worldwide). Following the hotel slayings of the first film, a group of young, sexy night shift workers are tasked with looking after Goodnight’s corpse at the conveniently-abandoned morgue. Among them is scream queen royalty, Danielle Harris, of “Halloween” and the Fangoria Hall Of Fame. Harris is, by default, the lead, so she’s given a pretty familiar love triangle plotline.

The showier role goes to Katherine Isabelle, a fellow scream queen and Soska collaborator who here plays a serial killer stan. I do wish this led to some sort of nerdy recall of the greatest hits of all killers in the WWE-verse, depicted or otherwise, but sadly this is just a thinly-sketched character detail. She seems to feel arousal at the thought of Goodnight on a rampage, however (which suggests her serial killer interest isn’t all that academic – disappointing), and when she hooks up with her boyfriend while the corpse is in the room, it somehow summons him back to life. Which, as far as slasher sequels, tracks.

Depressingly, this becomes the backbone of Goodnight’s interests. Due to his mother’s puritanical upbringing, he has to punish the sexually promiscuous. Instead of running for a Senate seat as a Republican, he decides to pick through this group of horned-up twentysomethings. There’s chopping, stabbing, some chases, all inside a morgue. It’s all very… competent, at best. Anyone well-versed in these American super-slashers, where a Jason/Michael Myers-type figure painlessly cuts a swath through helpless victims with no consequence won’t see anything new. And while that first film resolutely ended with the theoretically-squashed potential for a sequel, this one leaves the door open for a follow-up considerably. If we’re due one of these every eight years, well, it’s been a decade since this one.

I expected more of the Soska Sisters, Jen and Sylvia. “American Mary” was a horror film set in the world of surgical body modification, but the scares stemmed largely from the systematic patriarchy of the medical profession. It was a depiction of a world usually demonized by genre filmmakers and here presented without judgment and with clear eyes, and at points a sense of humor. Seemed like Hollywood would find a place for these twins. Instead, this movie was the first of a two-film deal with the WWE. I’m interested in their remake of David Cronenberg’s “Rabid”, which I haven’t been able to find streaming quite yet, though their offering after that, an S&M thriller called “On The Edge”, hasn’t seen distribution. They are strong, forceful female storytellers and actresses, and yet the leading men they’ve been able to work with lately are the likes of Dean Cain and Tommy Pistol. They currently have a because-of-public-domain sequel to “Night Of The Living Dead” on Tubi, and I might just sample that. But they clearly haven’t been given the resources “American Mary” should have provided. Here is a legally-dubious NSFW “Deadpool”-inspired short they co-directed back in 2018 that’s a PSA for giving blood.

I’ve become aware of the fact that the Soska Sisters have made some… curious connections over the last few years to a number of, well, unsavory types (and I’ve already named a couple in this review!). This is the sort of behavior men can engage in with complete freedom, but it always leads to punishment with women. A similar inequity exists in women’s prisons, which don’t receive the attention mens’ facilities do. As such, would you be surprised how poorly most women do behind bars?

I’ve noticed a strong discrepancy, in that men generally receive support from their mates in prison, visits, phone calls, letters. Women are, anecdotally, often loyal to a partner that has been jailed. By comparison, a large portion of men are responsible for the actions that have led to female imprisonment. And in other cases, when a female is incarcerated, any male partner surrenders to the bogus social programming everyone puts in place that suggests men are entitled to seek a mate, and the incapacitation of a partner should not be a roadblock to such behavior. Moreso than men, women are forgotten in prison.

The Federal Prison Oversight Act was signed this year after passing through Congress and the Senate. I’d like to tell you this was created to preemptively prevent cruelty and mistreatment of prisoners. But the fact is that one of the driving forces of this particular piece of legislation was because of a string of sexual assaults by prison at FCI Dublin in California, an investigation that led to criminal convictions for seven prison officials, including the warden. This is behavior engaged in, perhaps by seven officials (likely more), but encouraged by a system of abuse and mistreatment. When female prisoners are exploited and abused by officials paid and trained to keep them in bondage, in submission, incidents like the repeated violation at FCI Dublin aren’t a bug, they’re a feature.