Alone in the Dark

Director: Uwe Boll, ,
Starring: Christian Slater, Tara Reid, Stephen Dorff, Frank C. Turner, Mathew Walker, Will Sanderson, Mark Acheson, Darren Shahlavi, Karin Konoval, Craig Bruhnanski, Kwesi Ameyaw, ,

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DVD Review

Christian Slater stars as a mysterious agent on the trail of ancient demons in this latest video game adaptation.

We tend to criticise movies these days for being vacuous, poorly written fluff, but there’s a new director on the block that makes Paul W.S Anderson look positively Oscar-worthy in comparison. Uwe Boll is fast becoming this generation’s Ed Wood, but without the goofy charm and Johnny Depp biopic. He’s just plain bad. So bad it makes you wonder how the guy got a job in the movies, let alone be given the chance to adapt a popular video game for the screen. Alone in the Dark bombed in the States and limps straight on to DVD here, and the scariest thing is it ever got made at all.

Poor old Christian Slater. After starring in classics such as Heathers how did it ever come to this? He has charisma but for Uwe Boll this is obviously a quality that must be instantly crushed in favour of blank faces and laughable dialogue like, “I learned the truth a long time ago. Just because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it can’t kill you.” All this cheese might be enjoyable if it weren’t for the fact the script is not just dull and cliched, but ridiculously scattershot and illogical. The longest, most indecipherable introductory text in movie history doesn’t make a lick of sense, so you wonder what the hell preview audiences made of the film before said text was added to “make the plot clearer.”

Every single inventory from Things To Never Do In A Movie are present and correct: Harrison Ford monotone voice-over at random intervals? Check. Cheap bullet-time effect? Check. Cast pretty blonde as genius scientist? Check. Cheap CGI monsters at every step? Check. It just goes on and on. Imagine giving a dim-witted twelve-year-old money to write and direct his own horror movie and this is exactly what you would get.

Alone in the Dark was a pretty creepy video game, but as with Resident Evil the movie simply doesn’t live up to the game. At least Paul W.S Anderson’s Resident Evil was bad in an enjoyable way – Alone in the Dark is just plain bad. From the editing to the music to the lighting, there genuinely isn’t one intelligent or memorable moment to be found. Already rated as one of the worst movies of all time, Alone in the Dark deserves to stay in the dark. Forever.

Special Features:

Must we? Well there’s more than you’d expect (or deserve to be subjected to), including “Into The Dark – The Making of Alone in the Dark,” a short ten minute featurette where cast and crew painfully try to sell the concept, and “Shedding a Light – the visual FX of Alone in the Dark.” There’s also a trailer, storyboards, music videos and for those sadists among you, a commentary from Uwe Boll himself.

May God have mercy on your soul.

J.D. Lafrance

J.D. is a freelance writer who is currently doing research for a book on the films of Michael Mann. He likes reading anything written by Jack Kerouac, James Ellroy, J.D. Salinger, Harlan Ellison or Thomas Pynchon. J.D. is currently addicted to the T.V. series 24 and enjoys drinking a lot of Sprite. This is not a blatant plug for the beverage but if they ever decided to give him a lifetime supply he certainly wouldn’t turn them down.
view all DVD reviews by JD Lafrance

 

Rating: 20%

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