Books
‘See No Evil’ – WWE’s First Horror Movie Was This 2006 Slasher Starring Kane
With there being an overlap between wrestling fans and horror fans, it only made sense for WWE Studios to produce See No Evil. And much like The Rock’s Walking Tall and John Cena’s The Marine, this 2006 slasher was designed to jumpstart a popular wrestler’s crossover career; superstar Glenn “Kane” Jacobs stepped out of the ring and into a run-down hotel packed with easy prey. Director Gregory Dark and writer Dan Madigan delivered what the WWE had hoped to be the beginning of “a villain franchise in the vein of Jason, Freddy and Pinhead.” In hindsight, See No Evil and its unpunctual sequel failed to live up to expectations. Regardless of Jacob Goodnight’s inability to reach the heights of horror’s greatest icons, his films are not without their simple slasher pleasures.
See No Evil (previously titled Goodnight and Eye Scream Man) was a last gasp for a dying trend. After all, the Hollywood resurgence of big-screen slashers was on the decline by the mid-2000s. Even so, that first Jacob Goodnight offering is well aware of its genre surroundings: the squalid setting channels the many torturous playgrounds found in the Saw series and other adjacent splatter pics. Also, Gregory Dark’s first major feature — after mainly delivering erotic thrillers and music videos — borrows the mustardy, filthy and sweaty appearance of Platinum Dunes’ then-current horror output. So, visually speaking, See No Evil fits in quite well with its contemporaries.
Despite its mere setup — young offenders are picked off one by one as they clean up an old hotel — See No Evil is more ambitious than anticipated. Jacob Goodnight is, more or less, another unstoppable killing machine whose traumatic childhood drives him to torment and murder, but there is a process to his mayhem. In a sense, a purpose. Every new number in Goodnight’s body count is part of a survival ritual with no end in sight. A prior and poorly mended cranial injury, courtesy of Steven Vidler’s character, also influences the antagonist’s brutal streak. As with a lot of other films where a killer’s crimes are religious in nature, Goodnight is viscerally concerned with the act of sin and its meaning. And that signature of plucking out victims’ eyes is his way of protecting his soul.
Image: The cast of See No Evil enters the Blackwell Hotel.
Survival is on the mind of just about every character in See No Evil, even before they are thrown into a life-or-death situation. Goodnight is processing his inhumane upbringing in the only way he can, whereas many of his latest victims have committed various crimes in order to get by in life. The details of these offenses, ranging from petty to severe, can be found in the film’s novelization. This more thorough media tie-in, also penned by Madigan, clarified the rap sheets of Christine (Christina Vidal), Kira (Samantha Noble), Michael (Luke Pegler) and their fellow delinquents. Readers are presented a grim history for most everyone, including Vidler’s character, Officer Frank Williams, who lost both an arm and a partner during his first encounter with the God’s Hand Killer all those years ago. The younger cast is most concerned with their immediate wellbeing, but Williams struggles to make peace with past regrets and mistakes.
While the first See No Evil film makes a beeline for its ending, the literary counterpart takes time to flesh out the main characters and expound on scenes (crucial or otherwise). The task requires nearly a third of the book before the inmates and their supervisors even reach the Blackwell Hotel. Yet once they are inside the death trap, the author continues to profile the fodder. Foremost is Christine and Kira’s lock-up romance born out of loyalty and a mutual desire for security against their enemies behind bars. And unlike in the film, their sapphic relationship is confirmed. Meanwhile, Michael’s misogyny and bigotry are unmistakable in the novelization; his racial tension with the story’s one Black character, Tye (Michael J. Pagan), was omitted from the film along with the repeated sexual exploitation of Kira. These written depictions make their on-screen parallels appear relatively upright. That being said, by making certain characters so prickly and repulsive in the novelization, their rare heroic moments have more of an impact.
Madigan’s book offers greater insight into Goodnight’s disturbed mind and harrowing early years. As a boy, his mother regularly doled out barbaric punishments, including pouring boiling water onto his “dangling bits” if he ever “sinned.” The routine maltreatment in which Goodnight endured makes him somewhat sympathetic in the novelization. Also missing from the film is an entire character: a back-alley doctor named Miles Bennell. It was he who patched up Goodnight after Williams’ desperate but well-aimed bullet made contact in the story’s introduction. Over time, this drunkard’s sloppy surgery led to the purulent, maggot-infested head wound that, undoubtedly, impaired the hulking villain’s cognitive functions and fueled his violent delusions.
Image: Dan Madigan’s novelization for See No Evil.
An additional and underlying evil in the novelization, the Blackwell’s original owner, is revealed through random flashbacks. The author described the hotel’s namesake, Langley Blackwell, as a deviant who took sick pleasure in defiling others (personally or vicariously). His vile deeds left a dark stain on the Blackwell, which makes it a perfect home for someone like Jacob Goodnight. This notion is not so apparent in the film, and the tie-in adaptation says it in a roundabout way, but the building is haunted by its past. While literal ghosts do not roam these corridors, Blackwell’s lingering depravity courses through every square inch of this ill-reputed establishment and influences those who stay too long.
The selling point of See No Evil back then was undeniably Kane. However, fans might have been disappointed to see the wrestler in a lurking and taciturn role. The focus on unpleasant, paper-thin “teenagers” probably did not help opinions, either. Nevertheless, the first film is a watchable and, at times, well-made straggler found in the first slasher revival’s death throes. A modest budget made the decent production values possible, and the director’s history with music videos allowed the film a shred of style. For meatier characterization and a harder demonstration of the story’s dog-eat-dog theme, though, the novelization is worth seeking out.
Jen and Sylvia Soska, collectively The Soska Sisters, were put in charge of 2014’s See No Evil 2. This direct continuation arrived just in time for Halloween, which is fitting considering its obvious inspiration. In place of the nearly deserted hospital in Halloween II is an unlucky morgue receiving all the bodies from the Blackwell massacre. Familiar face Danielle Harris played the ostensible final girl, a coroner whose surprise birthday party is crashed by the resurrected God’s Hand Killer. In an effort to deliver uncomplicated thrills, the Soskas toned down the previous film’s heavy mythos and religious trauma, as well as threw in characters worth rooting for. This sequel, while more straightforward than innovative, pulls no punches and even goes out on a dark note.
The chances of seeing another See No Evil with Kane attached are low, especially now with Glenn Jacobs focusing on a political career. Yet there is no telling if Jacob Goodnight is actually gone, or if he is just playing dead.
Image: Katharine Isabelle and Lee Majdouba’s characters don’t notice Kane’s Jacob Goodnight character is behind them in See No Evil 2.
Books
Anxiety and Apocalyptic Road-Trips in ‘I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom’ [Review]
The rise of widely available internet during the late 90s and early 2000s gave up-and-coming authors a brand-new avenue through which they could share their words with the world without the need for publishers. Back then, free-to-read blogs and personal websites weren’t just gathering places for readers, they were also a forum that allowed writers to directly connect with their audience and spin yarns that old timey editors would probably have considered too niche for mainstream publication.
And while not all of these online stories were created equal, with some ending up unfinished and forever trapped in cyberspace, others became so popular that the leap from screen to the printed page was all but inevitable. One of my favorite examples of this is the iconic John Dies at the End, a book series that originally began as a hilarious in-universe blog run by “David Wong” (who we now know as Jason Pargin) before turning into a best-selling franchise complete with an underrated big-screen adaptation directed by Phantasm creator Don Coscarelli.
Throughout the years, Pargin has continued to expand his JDatE universe and has even dipped his toes into other genres while also making online history as a TikTok sensation, Podcast co-host (I’m a huge fan of Bigfeets in particular) and a legendary run as the former editor of comedy website Cracked. That’s why I was stoked to hear that 2024 would see the release of Pargin’s first standalone novel in nearly a decade, as I think the author is at his best when trying new things.
Titled I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom (which is right up there with This Book is Full of Spiders and Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick as far as excellent Jason Pargin book titles go), the upcoming novel is meant to be Jason’s first foray into more “grounded” fiction.
In the book, we follow anxiety-prone Twitch streamer and Lyft driver Abbot as he’s recruited by a mysterious young woman named Ether to help her transport an ominous-looking box across the United States in exchange for a life-changing sum of money. The only catch is that Abbot must leave his cell phone and digital life behind while also keeping the true nature of the trip secret from his friends and family. Unfortunately for the unlikely duo, their little road trip soon snowballs into a nation-wide panic as rumors spread about the potentially nation-destroying contents of the box, with our main characters becoming targeted by homicidal bikers, retired FBI operatives and the most dangerous pursuers of all – paranoid Redditors.
Basically, it’s Bonnie and Clyde for the social media age!
On the surface, Black Box of Doom might seem like a standard (and somewhat literal) mystery box thriller – a narrative structure that I have a great deal of contempt for due to how often it’s been mishandled in popular media over the past decade or so – but Jason goes out of his way to make it clear that the absurd conspiratorial thinking surrounding the box and the duo transporting it are the real story here.
The book may lack the patented combination of dick jokes and cosmic horror that made the JDatE novels so memorable, but genre fans will be pleased to hear that this more grounded thriller still manages to tap into some very real frights, including but not limited to incel uprisings, domestic terrorism and the psychological dangers of being perpetually online.
Jason’s iconic brand of crass humor is still present, with the book featuring laugh-out-loud descriptions of furry porn and extraterrestrial conspiracy theories, but these elements, alongside the violence traditionally associated with Pargin’s work, have been significantly toned down in order to better fit the unexpectedly uplifting themes of this catastrophic road trip. This softer approach may not work for everyone, but I think it complements the story’s virtual chaos rather nicely.
It’s notoriously difficult for storytellers to incorporate modern conveniences like smartphones and online subcultures into their plots without bringing to mind Steve Buscemi’s “How do you do fellow kids?” meme, but Pargin has miraculously captured a snapshot of the current cultural zeitgeist despite no longer being the same spry young man who wrote JDatE. I mean, the book’s vocabulary alone could only have been achieved by someone who actually put in the time and participated in actual internet communities instead of merely researching them from the outside – something that I can appreciate as someone who literally grew up online.
And yet, despite the hilariously accurate Reddit post and Twitch chat simulations, the story still diligently tackles serious themes and even contains a couple of nail-biting moments of tension – with a traffic pile-up involving hot sauce and cottage cheese being particularly memorable. Of course, as a fan of Jason’s more personal work (like his classic articles about the adult consequences of growing up in poverty), the highlight of the experience for me was finding unironic nuggets of both wisdom and genuine vulnerability hidden among Ether’s witty trivia and Abbot’s immature rants.
Unfortunately, the Black Box of Doom can be decidedly heavy-handed in its messaging at times, especially when it comes to Ether. Her character often feels more like an impossibly patient paragon of virtue meant to represent the author’s beliefs rather than a fully-fledged person. While this is somewhat mitigated by her backstory reveal towards the latter half of the experience, it’s a shame that such an engaging story is often bogged down by monologues about the current state of society – especially when some of these lectures could have been summed up as “can’t we all just get along?”.
Thankfully, the book mostly makes up for these naïve moments with some well-placed jokes, frequently reminding readers that this story isn’t meant to be taken seriously. There’s also a very welcome recognition that the issues plaguing modern society are actually much larger and more complex than internet-induced anxiety and cultural warfare, something that can be seen in the novel’s willingness to present us with conflicting opinions without necessarily pointing fingers at who’s really to blame for all the evil in the world.
Plus, as a lifelong internet weirdo, I really dig how the book incorporates the infamous Killdozer story into the narrative without it feeling like a complete parody.
Ultimately, Black Box of Doom is an experiment in empathy, challenging readers to engage with a disparate collection of shifting points of view and offering up a rare glimpse into the collective subconscious of modern-day America. The opinions presented here aren’t necessarily correct or even healthy (with even our main character suffering from incel-adjacent biases), but Pargin does a great job of reminding us that these are all just human beings trying to get by in an insane world.
I may still prefer the otherworldly madness of the JDatE books, as I think Pargin’s juvenile sense of humor pairs wonderfully with both mind-melting terror and fascinating insights into the human condition, but I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom is undeniably one of his best stories yet. Longtime fans might be a little disappointed at how tame this adventure is when compared to the author’s previous yarns, but I think the book still packs one a hell of a punch once you remember that we’re only a couple of news stories away from this satire becoming reality.
I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom comes out September 24, but it’s available now for pre-order wherever you get your books.
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