(left) Alone in the Dark (Alone In The Dark (DVD))

Member Name: stevepeto

Product:	Alone In The Dark (DVD)
Date:	04/10/06 (164 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Atmospheric, Special Effects

Disadvantages: Uwe boll (Director), Acting, Over Abused Storyline

Movie:

As an owner of the game of the same name, I was looking forward to the movie. I was hoping that they would capture some of the darkness and creepiness of the game, I was certain that it would entertain, which ultimately is what we all want from a movie. So did it make me want to have all the lights on so I wouldn't be "alone in the dark" or was it a snooze on the sofa with all the lights out?

To prepare myself I wandered off to the impressive official website, looking very H R Giger. I viewed the trailer and I must admit I enjoyed that. OK this was never going to be a good thought provoking film, but a decent, dark, sci-fi action flick would be fine with me. The Aliens seemed very.... well Alien as in from the film Alien, but that just could have been because the trailer screen was fairly small, I would reserve judgement on that until I had seen the actual movie.

We start the film with a huskily voiced narrative, including star wars like scrolling text that gives us some back-story about the super intelligent Abkani people who believed that there were two worlds, one of light and one of darkness and for some reason they opened a gateway between the two worlds and something evil slipped through, blah blah blah. Apparently this was added when initial audiences were a bit confused as to what it was all about. Not a good sign really is it?

So with the lengthy narrative out of the way we start the film. Edward Carnby (Christian Slater) is a young boy in an orphanage, Prof Lionel Hudgens (Matthew Walker) is an agent for a group called 713, and he is carrying out experiments on the kids at the orphanage, however on the night that all the other kids go missing, (we see them later in the film as zombies) good ol Edward has run away and hidden in a hut that holds a generator, where he gets electrocuted (apparently).

Fast forward 22 years and we see Carnby awake from a nightmare, he is on a plane, and is carrying some form of Abkani artefact, which someone tries to kill him for, we also find out early in the movie that he is an ex 713 member and a paranormal investigator.

Enlisting the help of Aline Cedrac (Tara Reid) who happens to be an ex girlfriend they run into some of the 713 people which includes the initially cocky Cmdr. Richard Burke (Stephen Dorff) and together they all go off to hunt the creatures of darkness, by finding clues going to a location, having a firefight in badly lit rooms, then repeating the process until they come to the disused mine, where we have the final firefight.

Ok, so it doesn't sound that original and inventive and guess what? It isn't. The actors, and I use the term actor's very loosely, have certainly seen better days. Christian Slater: The man has one expression on his face the entire movie, trying to look all tough but most of the time ends up looking constipated, a bit like the character in the first Max Payne game. Tara Reid: is terrible, wooden acting, bad lines delivered badly, she is completely unconvincing. Stephen Dorff: The best of a bad bunch. He plods through his lines and the scenes with no real conviction.

But it is the whole film as a package which is not up to much. There are numerous rip-offs from other films. The creatures in the film seem to be a cross between the Aliens, from the film Alien (so it wasn't just the size of the trailer, and I swear I saw a queen Alien in there at some point) and the creature from the film Relic (with Tom Sizemore).

And who directed the movie. Well it is Uwe Boll, of House of the Dead fame, which was another pile of rubbish. I also see that he is doing other games adaptations, such as Bloodrayne and Farcry. But looking at his previous movies, none of them has really been up to much, and the trend is continuing. Give me Paul W S Anderson any day.

If only the film was as good as the picture. The title of the film suggests that a lot of the film will take place in the dark and it is a top notch transfer. Shadows have depth and the blacks are deep. Take the museum scene for example when the security guard is hunting for the source of the light flicker. Daylight colours are good too, skin tones seem very natural and there is a nice neutral palette to the outside scenes with a slightly earthy palette to the interior scenes. A good example of this is the first fight scene where we go from bright, clear external views to earthy interior shots.

Lastly the soundtrack. 99% of the soundtrack is spot on too, use of surround sound speakers is good, and the bass is deep and rumbling with a few loud bits that make you jump. I say 99% is spot on because the one time where the score seems totally unconnected with the film is the shoehorned in, pointless "sex" scene.

Extras:
Into the dark:
This is basically a short making of Alone in the Dark, various people sing the movies praises, where they admit to not doing an interpretation of the games but that they took the characters and did their own story. So I guess after seeing this we cannot really complain about the film being nothing like the games. Uwe especially goes overboard on the praise bandwagon, so much so I had to have my sick bag close to hand; whereas Christian thinks the film is perfection. Oh dear. Approx 7.5 minutes

Shedding a light:
This deals with the Special Effects used in the film. We find out there are several Matte scenes that I didn't realise were Matte's so fair play to some areas of the special effects. Rather than ending up as a praise fest it is a more honest look at how they created the special effects, fairly interesting whether you liked the Sfx or not. Approx 9.5 minutes

Storyboard to screen
Shows 2 sequences, the Pinkerton Chase which is the initial fight scene and the Sand Worms which happens toward the end of the film. Both show the storyboard and film sequence side by side. Its ok if your interested in that sort of thing, one sequence is just over 2 minutes long and the other around 3 minutes.

Bullet time animatic:
An animation of the first fight scene, which I found pretty boring, and thankfully only lasts about 1.5 minutes

Music videos
This presents 5 music videos, all filled with long haired, tattooed rockers and enough head banging to rattle your brain, some of the tunes and videos were pretty good although not everyone's bag, if you like heavy metal you will like them, if you don't you wont, simple as that really.

Director's commentary:
Uwe talks us through various aspects of the film, including the reason why we have the ultra long text crawl at the beginning of the film. (Apparently audiences didn't "understand" the film). He also talks about how he got the directorship of the film and we find that he is a big fan of movie from game films. Uwe is frustrated by the films poor reception and puts it down to films like White Noise and Hide and Seek which were released around the same time, however he seems blinkered to the fact that the film is confusing and bitty. Regardless it is a pretty much standard director's commentary in that there are interesting in places and boring in others.

Please note, i wrote this review for a site that I moderate on, i wanted to cross post here for others to read, these are all my own words and has not been copied from anyone else.

Summary: only get it if it is really really cheap