“Things mortal man was not meant to watch”The only positive thing I can find to say is that it's a marginal improvement on the directors debut flick, the truly abysmally cringe-worthy and flop-tastic "House of the Dead".
In 'Alone in the Dark', the director (Uwe Boll, and how the name should instil terror in the hearts of film lovers everywhere) has adapted yet another video game (you’d have thought he’d have learnt the first time) in another impressively botched attempt to produce a workable movie. The end result is no more than an ultra-low budget, wooden and rather amateurish, low brow, somewhat sad, clone of the 1997's (far, far, far superior) museum gribblie thriller "The Relic". Add to this the occasional “Starship Troopers” action sequence, presumably thrown in to distract from the distinct lack of any meat upon this movies somewhat cadaverous bones. Lovecraft must be, somewhat appropriately, spinning in his grave.
There are no characters, just a few tired role-play stereotypes wandering around getting themselves eviscerated or narrating exposition. Character development is achieved by giving people a name and an occupation, that's about it. Even the overtly long opening text crawl was added after test audiences reported that the plot confused the b’jesus out of them. Er, what plot?
The action scenes, occasionally passable as they were, begin randomly on their own, coming from nowhere with a pounding track of hardcore Amsterdam techno. I found that I was asking myself questions such as "Where is this happening? What's going on? How did they know about that? If I commit ritual seppuku will it be worth it so that I don’t have to sit here for another 95 minutes of this unspeakable tosh?"
Even the synopsis is excrement beyond belief, and I quote: ”Edward Carnby (Christian Slater, of all the people who should be wise to toilet paper in script form), detective of the paranormal, unexplained and supernatural, investigates a mystery (the recent death of a friend) comes face to face with bizarre horrors that prove both psychologically disturbing and lethal, as he discovers that evil demons worshiped by an ancient culture called the Abskani are planning on coming back to life in the 21st century to once again take over the world... "
For heavens sake. If you are offered the chance to view this movie, I humbly suggest that you gouge out your own eyes with a pencil. It’s rubbish without kitsch value. This is so poor that it’ll never even be hip for being bad. It saddens me that the medium of DVD has given such films a refuge instead of going 'straight-to-video'.
Movie: 0.5 of 5
Extras: 2 of 5