Although some of my more negative reviews may seem to suggest otherwise, I usually try to find something good to say about even the worst of films. After all, usually a great deal of time, effort and money went into making them, and the intent - one can only hope - wasn't to make a bad film.
Even so, such efforts on my part are often taxed and occasionally unsuccessful, but I finally figured out what's good about "Alone in the Dark." When people hear that you're a movie reviewer, they automatically want to know what's good to see, but a few masochists and the general curious also want to know what the worst is.
While the year is still very young, I think I already have my answer for that shameful category, and it's this film. Similarly bad to atrocious films may still be waiting in the wings to wreak havoc on one's intelligence, but it will have to be a doozy to best this one and knock it from the top - or is that the bottom - of the cinematic garbage heap.
In relation to my "find something positive" crusade, I also try to give a film the benefit of the doubt up to the point the lights dim, the curtain parts and light passes over moving celluloid to tell us a story. In this case, I had to bite my tongue that the film was based on some old Atari video game that few, if any non-gamers had ever heard of (Space Invaders and Asteroids? Yes. Alone in the Dark? You got me).
Then there's the fact that the filmmaker's first mainstream film was the abysmal "House of the Dead" and that one of the screenwriter's sole credits was "MVP2: Most Valuable Primate" (that being the straight to video release about a sports-playing chimp).
Being such a charitable guy, I also think that one should get a second chance at redeeming themselves for past failures, but such acts of tolerance and generosity end with this release. Bad in just about every way imaginable and then some, the picture will test most anyone's patience and may not even find an audience among hardcore, "game boy" fans. Yes, the title may very well describe one's experience of watching this film in a likely empty theater.
Once the lights do go down, you immediately know you're in trouble when the expository, onscreen text begins to blather on about some ancient race, worlds of light and dark, evil, artifacts and more. Likely to be of interest only to geeky "tween" boys, the insult to injury is that a narrator reads that text - word for word - as it scrolls up the screen.
Things only go downhill from there. Director Uwe Bolls and his trio of screenwriters then proceed to lift storylines, characters, monsters and camera shots from so many other films - and then display them in nothing more than a hodgepodge fashion - that the effort should be called "I saw it before in a better movie."
While the most notably stolen elements are those from the "Alien" films, most any zombie flick and the old TV series "The X-Files," there's so much ripped off from other films that I don't think there's an original bone in this artificial body. The problem is only exacerbated by the fact that all of it's messily assembled and randomly cobbled together with little thought about why this or that occurs.
To add insult to injury, the overly complicated but nonsensical back story and related plot elements are absolutely unnecessary. That's because this film stays true to its origins in being a shoot 'em up game, where the atrociously rendered "Alien" rip-off creatures and zombie like characters usually find themselves at the wrong end of some sort of automatic weapon.
Of course, many "good guys" are killed as well, but the effort is neither as satisfying as any standard first-person shooter video game or the far superior films it so blatantly copies. Throw in some bad acting, ridiculous dialogue, useless and completely out of place, film noir style, voice over narration, bad special effects and inept overall direction and you have the recipe for bottom of the barrel "entertainment."
The likes of Christian Slater ("Windtalkers," "Broken Arrow"), Tara Reid ("My Boss' Daughter," the "American Pie" films) and Stephen Dorff ("Cold Creek Manor," "Feardotcom") try to get through it all with a straight face, but you know they have to be damning their agents and/or their own better judgment (or lack thereof) and lamenting their fall from even the "B" movie list.
Had the effort been done with tongue firmly planted in cheek, some of the atrocities may have been forgiven or at least tolerated. Yet, no one associated with the effort - in front of or behind the camera - seems to realize that viewers will be laughing at them rather than with them.
No, it's not a comedy, but some parts of it are so unintentionally bad - particularly the abysmal, awful and often abominable dialogue - that you'll occasionally be howling with laughter. Had that level of camp - accidental or not - been maintained, it might have been possible to enjoy this as a really bad guilty pleasure. Alas, that's not the case. Getting my earlier vote for worst of the year, "Alone in the Dark" earns the cinematic goose egg, a big fat 0 out of 10.
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