The Sylvester Stallone Slasher That’s So Bad It Needs To Be Studied For Science

By Robert Scucci
| Updated 5 seconds ago

Did you know that Sylvester Stallone was in a slasher in 2002 called D-Tox? Or maybe you remember it by its other, infinitely more punny title, Eye See You. It’s a slasher, whodunit, “we’re all locked up at a rehab center for troubled cops and somebody’s trying to kill us all” plot that had the potential to be unique, but instead burns through every single slasher trope faster than the box of oily rags and blasting caps next to the furnace in Homer Simpson’s basement.

The rehab compound is located in the remote Wyoming wilderness during a blizzard. Every single character, at some point, looks shifty-eyed and suspicious. The phones don’t work and the body count rises. Stallone marbles-mouths his way through the grieving process, which you think is because of his character’s alcoholism, but once he cleans up you realize that’s just how he talks. Kris Kristofferson sits menacingly by a fire.

Writer Howard Swindle really thought he had something here, but all he accomplished was swindling me out of 96 minutes of my time. Eye See You tries to be shifty and clever, but it’s so boilerplate that there are no surprises. Even worse, people are dropping like flies, and it’s just so boring.

D-Tox… Like Detox. Get it? Please Get It! 

D-Tox, or Eye See You, centers on FBI agent Jake Malloy. A serial killer is on the loose, and he’s targeting police officers. The killer gouges the eyes out of his victims (get it? please get it), then hangs them up in a ritualistic fashion. Jake learns of this MO when he’s called to his former partner’s house to examine his remains. While surveying the crime scene, Jake receives a call from the killer, who’s now at his girlfriend’s home. Turns out the old “murder his former partner as a decoy so I can kill his significant other” move worked exactly as planned.

Jake goes on a three-month mega bender. His supervisor, Chuck (Charles S. Dutton), sends him to an experimental, remote rehab center in Wyoming run by former cop turned recovery counselor Dr. John Mitchell (Kris Kristofferson). At this fortified compound, devoted entirely to getting cops back on the wagon, we’re introduced to a bunch of hardened men, all of whom are so intensely gripped by their vices that they’re deeply unpleasant to be around.

Included in this lineup of guys, who may or may not be a serial killer hiding in a rehab center as a way to antagonize Jake, are ex-SWAT officer Peter Noah (Robert Patrick), British Bobby Frank Slater (Christopher Fulford), hardened homicide detective turned Bible thumper Willie Jones (Courtney B. Vance), LAPD’s finest mental case Lopez (Angela Alvarado Rosa), and geriatric RCMP officer McKenzie (Robert Prosky).

In addition to this group of boozers in blue are the staffers, like Dr. John’s assistant Hank and the resident nurse on duty, Jenny (Polly Walker), who becomes Jake’s romantic interest. Certainly a man who’s grieving the very recent, brutal murder of his girlfriend, and who also has a severe substance abuse problem, will benefit from becoming attached to somebody right before the killer continues his rampage in such a stark, bleak setting.

As you would expect, everybody starts dying, but their deaths are staged to look like suicides. Knowing the killer’s MO, Jake suspects foul play, and everybody starts to turn on each other. Conveniently, Agent Chuck stays in town because he figures they’ll need him to save the day by the third act, so he goes ice fishing and waits for his cue from the director. To add just a little more drama, the killer writes notes on the back of his victims’ eyelids, which is honestly the most impressive thing about this movie when you consider the texture.

$6.4 Million In, $55 Million Out

Receiving a very limited release, almost as if they didn’t want anybody seeing it, Eye See You currently carries an 18 percent critical score on Rotten Tomatoes. It earned just $6.4 million at the box office against its reported $55 million budget. If I had to guess why this film flopped so hard, it’s because it doesn’t even know what kind of movie it is.

It’s a slasher that plays out like one of those mystery parties the desperate sitcom friend throws because they think it’ll make everyone like them more. A majority of the kills are off screen, which makes no sense because the bodies are still pretty gnarly when they’re discovered, and the gore is halfway decent.

The setting makes no sense. It’s a giant bunker in the middle of the wilderness, but everybody is still allowed to freely roam around as they please, weather permitting. You could have just sent them to a rehab in the city with better security. It would be just as isolated and more conducive to the kind of therapy sessions they’re trying to have. Nothing here makes sense, and it’s not even fun to watch because there’s not even any unintentional humor to celebrate.

Eye See You, also known as D-Tox, can be streamed for free on Prime Video, because I’m pretty sure the only way it’s going to make its money back is through the two-minute ads every 15 minutes.