Eye See You (aka D-Tox) (Film Review)

2002 Universal Pictures/DEJ Productions>
Directed by: Jim Gillespie; Written by: Howard Swindle
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Tom Berenger, Charles S. Dutton, Sean Patrick Flanery, Dina Meyer, Robert Patrick, Robert Prosky, Courtney B. Vance, Polly Walker, Jeffrey Wright, and Kris Kristofferson
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 96 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 1/10

In the first 15 minutes of Eye See You, after an overlong opening credits sequence featuring the voiceover ramblings of a cop-murdering serial killer, FBI Agent, Jake Malloy, pulls an all-nighter at a bar with his old cop friends, listens to them express their fears about the cop-murdering serial killer from the opening credits, goes home to his sleepy, yet-adoring girlfriend, while one of his old buddies goes home to get murdered by the cop-murdering serial killer, than goes to investigate the murder the next morning, where he gets a call from the killer who then announces he is at Malloy's house and murdering Malloy's girlfriend, whereupon Malloy races home to find his brutally murdered girlfriend hanging from the ceiling, after which he becomes an alcoholic. He is an alcoholic for roughly three minutes of screen time, whereupon his fellow FBI Agent, Hendricks, visits him and tells him he needs help. For some reason, Hendricks takes him to a snowed-in, converted nuclear silo in Wyoming that's now a rehab center for recovering members of law enforcement, run by "Doc" Mitchell, a former cop and recovering alcoholic. Since nothing takes long in this film that's never heard of, let alone concerned with pacing, Malloy's fellow recovering officers begin to get murdered almost as soon as he arrives. Is one of these rehab guys the serial killer? Has this maniacal murderer followed Malloy to this frozen underground bunker? Will Malloy survive long enough to find his revenge? Can you even sit through this long enough to find out? I mean, it only took 20 minutes to get this far into the film, and even that felt like three hours.

Why would I ever watch this?

Simple.
For a decent chunk of the 2010's, the only way I could watch a movie at home was through Redbox. For some reason, my then local Redbox machine, situated outside a Dollar Store in the middle of a sugar cane field, kept 2002's Eye See You front-and-center. The movie was always up on the advertising bar, even though it hadn't even been released that decade. This always baffled me, but continuous exposure did little to pique my interest in the film. The movie looked terrible. 

Now that it's the 2020's, and I'm back in the city with high-speed streaming, I have thousands of movies at my fingertips. Prestige platforms like Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, and Vudu offer hundreds of great streaming movies, often at a low price. Those platforms are great and all, but sometimes I just want to watch some free trash--and for that, I've got services like Tubi and Crackle. These free apps offer piles of lesser known, lesser seen flicks, including Eye See You. Apparently having a serious need for some serious audio-visual garbage, I finally broke down and watched the film. It's one of the worst I've ever seen.
Should I even review this movie? Was that plot synopsis not enough to show you it is terrible? 

The lack of care that went into the badly punned Eye See You is astounding. The awful, cheesily goofy and unartful pacing isn't even the worst part. The way this film represents rehabilitation as sitting in a meeting where one guy stands up and berates everyone, then then the counselor tells that guy to cut it out and dismisses everyone somehow isn't the worst part. The complete lack of humor or any moment of joy isn't even the worst part. Not even the piecemeal, hacky, "did a child write this?" script is the worst part. NOT EVEN DEAN SEMLER'S EXCELLENT, WASTED CINEMATOGRAPHY IS THE WORST PART.

The worst part is that Eye See You squanders not only one of Sylvester Stallone's best performances, but the talents of Tom Berenger, Charles S. Dutton, Jeffrey Wright, Kris Kristofferson, Polly Walker, Courtney B. Vance, and Robert Patrick. Yes, this absolute murderers row of performers were somehow convinced to star in this dud, which tested so badly, the studio shelved it for years, changed its name, changed its name again, and barely released it. This whole thing is an abomination. Thanks, Tubi. Desire for garbage sated.