Maybe it's the smears of blood on the wall of the spooky abandoned house. Or the madman with the ax, or the hacked-off limbs. Or maybe it's the way the camera seems to sweep into the gooey, gouged-out eye socket. But something about the opening scene of "See No Evil" tells you that this movie is here to get its gore on.

Then again, the big WWE logo that introduces "See No Evil" as the first film from the TV wrestling empire achieves the same effect with much more economy. WWE star Kane (Glen Jacobs) is the aspiring franchise killer as he gamely fulfills the role's prerequisites: a giant, (all but) mute maniac who kills anybody but has a particular fondness for troubled teenagers.

The same storytelling principles at work in the soap opera of WWE wrestling are employed here. The barest of set-ups — group of juvenile delinquents, abandoned hotel, crazed killer — is put in place to allow the mayhem to begin. The results are what you'd expect with a script from a first-time screenwriter (Dan Madigan) whose only previous experience is as a "writer" is various incarnations of TV wrestling that all have the word "Smackdown" in them. Not to mention a director (Gregory Dark) who comes to the horror genre from the world of "adult films," where he directed such classics as "New Wave Hookers," and a cast of actors you've never heard of or seen before.

It's a joke, in other words. Or at least, it would be if everybody involved didn't seem to be taking it so seriously. Granted, that just makes it an even bigger joke, but somehow not as funny.

Mostly, there's the just-how-dumb-do-they-think-we-are level of remedial filmmaking. This is strictly off-the-rack horror stuff, a little of this film, a little of that, absolutely nothing original. Most of "See No Evil" is taken from "Saw" and "Friday the 13th." Like the former, the victims are trapped in a maze-like setting; like the latter, Jason, I mean, Jacob is a man-boy driven crazy by his psycho mom.

Then there's the assembly-line predictability of it all. Far from conjuring feelings of horror, as the bodies pile up, there's such a lack of anything that might otherwise interest or distract viewers. The victims become like a list of chores to get through, you just want the killer to hurry up so you can check them off. And while "The Da Vinci Code's" opening stirs debate about the movie's treatment of religious belief, here comes a movie that links a killer's bloodlust (he has a special thing for digging the eyeballs out of his victim) to his religious upbringing. The recurring use of a sing-songy recording of "Jesus Loves the Little Children" as he does his rampaging-maniac thing is just the sort of juvenile stunt that the WWE built its brand on.

Finally, though, the effect of "See No Evil," in this age of real-life terror and the movies (such as "United 93") that it produces, is bemusement at the naivete driving it. Seriously, some super-strong mama's boy with a head full of maggots (honest, the movie makes sure we see them) is about as scary as sitting around a campfire singing about "greasy, grimy gopher guts."

<b>TITLE:</b> "See No Evil"<b>DIRECTOR:</b> Gregory Dark<b>CAST:</b> Glen Jacobs (Kane), Samantha Noble, Craig Horner, Tiffany Lamb, Luke Pegler, Cecily Polson and Corey Parker Robinson<b>RATED:</b> Rated R (gore, strong violence, language and sexual content, drug use)<b>GRADE:</b> 1 Star (out of 5)