Alone in the Dark
Watch it on Tubi for free.
Or buy a copy on Amazon if you are a fool.
God help me I’m watching another Uwe Boll movie. I swore I would never do this again, but here I am. It’s time for another terrible ‘adaption’ of a video game from the butcher of any IP he’s handed.
Let’s open with a stupidly long text scroll info dumping a lot of shit no one will ever remember. Not only is a text scroll they have somebody reading it as well. Because Puke Bowl thinks movie audiences are completely illiterate I’m assuming. Fucking hell.
Right off the bat I have to say the dialogue is so absolutely dreadful. Much of it really just makes no sense, disjointed, and delivered with all the effort of an elementary school play. They push in the exposition explaining what’s going on, which of course completely negates the need for that intro scrolling wall of text. They could have completely dropped that shit but instead they like telling you ahead of time what they are going to tell you later.
So very badly shot at almost every chance they could. Let’s walk away from the house just so we can turn back around and walk into the house. Just really dumb shots like this over and over again. Here’s a box with a gun and a bunch of bullets that hurt the creatures… so when one shows up at your house you get as far away from that gun as possible. Hey come over here and talk to me so I can then walk away and leave you where I just called you too. Over and fucking over again.
Tara Reid cannot act, she’s like a cardboard cutout of herself with the mouth rigged to move. Evidently there was a sex scene in the original release that’s not in the version I just watched. That scene is probably the only reason Uwe Balls had her in the film, he wanted to see her naked. Stephen Dorff comes along to basically play Stephen Dorff in every movie you’ve seen him in. Christian Slater as the main character Edward Carnby does the best he can do but with what he’s been given to work with, well nobody can make this shit sandwich work. Some of the other acting jobs are pretty dire as well. Probably due in part to complete and utter lack of any constructive direction what so ever.
People trash the special effects in this one. But, to be honest, I’ve seen worse being pumped out today. But it really is a sloppy mix of sloppy practical effects and CGI mixed together. With to much focus on the gore which really doesn’t help a damn thing because this is no where near a horror movie like the Uwe Bore thought he was making.
Every damn thing about the ‘story’ or the way scenes are shot feel like they’re trying to imitate other, much better, movies. Like Eww Boll couldn’t actually create a complete original thought and instead borrowed ideas from everyone else. Then mashed them all together while smiling like a blathering idiot.
Now this is better than House of the Dead or Bloodrayne… but that’s not saying much. This is very early 2000’s direct to bargain bin DVD fair at best. They spent 20 million on this absolute shit show, that’s like throwing stacks of cash into a wood chipper.
Blair Erickson wrote the early versions of the script and, well, you can pretty much tell what happened by what he said in this ‘Something Awful’ interview:
The original script took the Alone in the Dark premise and depicted it as if it were actually based on a true story of a private investigator in the northeastern U.S. whose missing persons cases begin to uncover a disturbing paranormal secret. It was told through the eyes of a writer following Edward Carnby and his co-worker for a novel and depicted them as real-life blue-collar folks who never expected to find hideous beings waiting for them in the dark. We tried to stick close to the H. P. Lovecraft style and the low-tech nature of the original game, always keeping the horror in the shadows so you never saw what was coming for them.
Thankfully Dr. Boll was able to hire his loyal team of hacks to crank out something much better than our crappy story and add in all sorts of terrifying horror movie essentials like opening gateways to alternate dimensions, bimbo blonde archaeologists, sex scenes, mad scientists, slimy dog monsters, special army forces designed to battle slimy CG dog monsters, Tara Reid, "Matrix" slow-motion gun battles, and car chases. Oh yeah, and a ten-minute opening back story scroll read aloud to the illiterate audience, the only people able to successfully miss all the negative reviews.
There were parts of that script apparently still in here. Where Carnby does the voice over bits, which vanish for long periods of times when the dumbass stuff is going on. This entire thing is a train wreck after the Uwe Bowel Movement got it’s fingers in there. Maybe that sex scene in the middle would have helped a little bit if just for the male gaze factor.
Don’t watch this dogshit of a movie. It’s not worth it.
"I hold here the last bit of my dignity that I pissed away by being in this film. But I got to rub up against Tara Reid so why not?"
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