It's Halloween month! And if you have a problem with me celebrating Halloween the entire month, can I remind you that we have had to put up with a global pandemic since February and I need some joy in my life, alright?! So what better way to kick off Halloween month than with Alone in the Dark, the 2005 "Horror" movie that doesn't really feature any people being alone in the dark at any point.
I've never played any of the Alone in the Dark video games, but I can safely assume that this movie has absolutely fuck all to do with the actual events in any of them. We start on a boat, where some guy who looks a bit like Jeremy Corbyn opens a chest of gold and unleashes all manner of shit, turning exactly 19 people into super zombies. Meanwhile, Edward Carnby (Christian Slater) the star of our film, who was an orphan as a kid, but then he went to work for Bureau 713; a secret government agency that investigates paranormal stuff, but now he does his own thing, has some kind of artefact that he picked up from... somewhere... Peru? And these very nasty creatures later identified as Xeno's (and looking suspiciously alot like the Xenomorph's from Alien) would quite like it back, I think... I'm not totally sure. Anyway, one thing leads to another and there is a big gun fight with these 19 super zombies, and some Xeno's and Edward saves his nemesis now turned pal Commander Burke (Stephen Dorff). Turns out they have to go to a mine because that's where it's all kicking off, and for some reason his girlfriend Aline (Tara Reid, who despite her reputation is by no means the worst actor in this movie) tags along with him and his new best pal into the mine and they discover there are a whole colony of Xeno's living deep underground. Like millions of them. Burke blows them up, I think sacrificing himself? And Edward and Aline emerge from the mine right outside the orphanage where here grew up because of course he did.
Right off the bat this movie just threw a fucking essay at me, narrated walls of text giving background story for like 5 minutes. The whole point of a well crafted movie is that they fill you in on the back story as the movie plays out?! And then it just flipped from scene to scene, one minute we're on the boat with the old guy, then we're in the museum with Tara Reid, then we're back at the boat, then we're not... Then a little bit later there is a completely unnecessary but mercifully short "sex scene", then there's a random montage of shooting with loud heavy metal played over it??... This movie is the cinematic equivalent of dropping paint filled water bombs on a tarpaulin from a distance and then going: "There: Art."
On the fly exposition, poorly shoehorned in, plagues this movie throughout and if Christian Slater and Stephen Dorff were any more wooden you could have propped them up against the side of your garage... if you have one... There's a whole 15 minute bit with the army setting up? You never get a scene where the Avengers get dressed before they go out to beat up the bad guys do you?? You never get a real clear shot of a Xeno which just disappointed me. You could have at least given me that movie, and the last 5-10 minutes just left me with more answers than questions; why has Sister Clara committed suicide? Where are all the kids in the orphanage? Why has the city been evacuated? Did the Xeno's get out? If so, how? It's just an absolute fucking mess.
Uwe Boll is legendary as a Director of terrible movies, and even more so for his piss poor video game adaptions, of which this is the first I've ever seen, but this isn't his first attempt. This is the 10th movie he's Directed?! He's had enough practice, you think he would at least know what he's doing by now?! This could have been one of the low budget Asylum movies you get on SyFy but it wasn't, this was shot with a budget of $20,000,000. TWENTY MILLION. And it was just terrible. Terrible acting, needless continuity, completely un-necessary and frankly bizarre scenes crowbared into the middle of the picture, a storyline narrative than ran about as consistently as an overturned bowl of rice pudding topped off with a cinematic faux pas, cliche sequel bait ending. Completely atrocious. Zero Stars.
