F

There’s one very satisfying moment in “See No Evil.” It comes when the psycho killer in the teen splatter flick dispatches a particularly obnoxious victim by stuffing her ringing cell phone down her throat. For those of us who despise those contraptions–especially when inconsiderate jerks bring them into movie theatres, ready to light up and emit their hideous ring tones–it’s an outcome that almost seems just.

But otherwise, horror movies don’t get much more basic than this one–a silly, sleazy, unremittingly ugly slasher picture that makes the cardinal error of not being at all scary. In a completely implausible premise, a bunch of teen delinquents are dispatched to help clean up a dilapidated hotel in return for a reduction of their sentences; the plan is to turn it into a homeless shelter. But unbeknownst to anyone, a mass murderer with the obligatory religious mania and various sharp instruments–axes, hooks and assorted knives–is holed up there. (In the bloody prologue we see that four years earlier, the guy had offed a bunch of people in a house, as well as cutting off the arm of the cop who just happens to be chaperoning the hotel-bound kids now.) It’s not long before he begins stalking and slaughtering them, removing their eyes in his signature move (hence the title, get it?). The kids scream, run through the dismal hallways and die gruesomely (in between making sexual advances toward one another, of course), until a big finale with multiple climaxes in which a few potential victims survive. You might ask yourself, just how has a drooling lunatic survived for four years without being caught or killed? Well, there’s a twist at the end that explains it all–one that’s supposed to be a shocking surprise but that even the most unobservant viewer should have spotted at most thirty minutes in.

The villain is played by a hulking pro wrestler named Glen Jacobs, who goes under the stage name Kane, and the script was written by Dan Madigan, who’s scripted World Wrestling Entertainment episodes in the past (WWE also produced the movie) and apparently decided that the best vehicle for Mr. Jacobs was a simple retread of the mass-killer scenario from the old “Friday the 13th” franchise spruced up with the sort of graphic gore familiar from recent pictures like “Hostel” and “Saw.” But there’s no attempt to add the note of adolescent cleverness one finds in those movies–it’s just simple-minded eighties-style mayhem, served up with no particular elan.

As for Mr. Jacobs, perhaps his bogeyman turn works better in the wrestling ring than it does here. Certainly he has nowhere near the screen presence of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, another former grappler, and though he’s not appreciably worse than Paul “Triple H” Levesque was in his supporting role in “Blade: Trinity,” he’s not remotely frightening–his habit of puffing out his cheeks and scowling actually makes him look rather ridiculous. (Perhaps the best commentary on his performance comes in a scene added to the final credits, when a stray dog comes upon his apparently lifeless body.) But none of the purportedly professional actors and actress surrounding him do significantly better: the teens do manage to be rather repellent, but that appears to have been easy for them, and the handful of adults–especially Cecily Polson, as the elderly woman behind the renovation of the hotel, match them all too well. Of course, perhaps the supporting players were damping down their performances so as not to outshine Kane. But one seriously doubts that any such self-denial was involved, merely a general incapacity.

Visually “See No Evil” has the cruddy, vermin-infested look common to all such movies, and Ben Nott’s gritty photography catches every scuttling rat and cockroach; so if you like sinking into sludge for ninety minutes, the movie is for you. It was directed by one Gregory Dark, who’s gone through a long series of pseudonyms during his career, and given the quality of this movie, he probably should have assumed a new one for it–one that might have successfully concealed his identity. As it is, he’ll have to bear the shame of having it on his resume. That’s a fate that’s arguably worse than any that befalls the teens on the screen.

So save your money and just watch “Smackdown” instead–even it has got to be more entertaining than this swill.