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Alone in the Dark (2005)

Evil awakens.


Christian SlaterChristian Slater

Stephen Dorff

Tara Reid

Will Sanderson

Directed by:

Uwe Boll

Rating: 2/10

Running Time: 96 minutes

US Certificate: R UK Certificate: 15

If crap movies are your thing, then its highly-possible that German poo-peddlar Uwe Boll is your God. Sadly, for the rest of us, the man represents little more than a cinematic pain in the botty, curling out a seemingly endless log of smellsome celluloid into the Hollywood latrine. Alone in the Dark might not be the Bollmeisters worst film to date  anyone whos seen 2003s House of the Dead will probably see where Im coming from on that one  but, given the improved cast and increased resources at his disposal this time, its got to be one of his most unforgivable.

Like House of the Dead, this is another ill-advised attempt at turning a video game into a convincing movie project. Youd think Herr Boll might have learned his lesson last time, but apparently not, for this is a film laden with ridiculous characters, laughable dialogue, silly-looking monsters and a cast who each look so embarrassed to be there that they stop just short of wearing t-shirts bearing the message We needed the money, okay?.

Lead player is Christian Slater, a guy whos a decent enough actor (not a description I can straight-facedly attribute to co-star Tara Reid, by the way), but who lets himself down badly by getting involved in this tripe. He plays Edward Carnby, who 22 years earlier escaped the clutches of a mad scientist (Matthew Walker) Hell-bent on using orphans as bait for a bunch of 10,000-year-old demons. Now haunted by shabbily-edited flashbacks, our Eddie spends his days trying to get to the bottom of what exactly went on when he was a kid. Thats unlike the screenwriters, who are simply trying to get to the bottom of that barrel so they can scrape it for a little longer.

Alone in the Dark masquerades as some sort of horror but  even if it was in any way possible to comprehend whats actually going on with the plot  its just far too amateurish in every conceivable department to be taken even remotely seriously. It starts off a bit like its trying to pass for a particularly turgid episode of The X-Files, but by the second half has turned into something vaguely comparable to Aliens minus tension, excitement or credibility.

By the time the whole thing has abandoned any semblance of story-building and turned into a jumbled, impenetrable shoot-em-up (with atrocious rock music in accompaniment), youll really wish you WERE alone in the dark. That is, alone to spare your embarrassment at watching such a rubbish flick, and in a brand of darkness SO dark that you cant actually see the screen.

It's Got: A so-called warning sign that says once you make it here alive, youre already dead. Gee, thanks for that one!

It Needs: A similar warning posted inside all of the theatres showing this muck.


House of the Dead, The Relic


In this Atari-slanted horror ride, only one thing can save you from out-right misery  and thats laughing out loud at the jaw-dropping ineptitude of the entire project.