Alone in the Dark

Alone in the Dark
Cast: Christian Slater, Tara Reid, Stephen Dorff, Mark Acheson, William Sanderson
Studio: Lion’s Gate
Rating: 1/10

CORPORATE LINE: You wake up in the middle of the night with the feeling someone is in the room with you. You get a flash of panic as you fumble for your bedside lamp. But when you turn on the light, no one is there.

You might feel safe…but just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there. Watching. Waiting. Existing at the fragile boundaries of our perception. There is a world around us, a world most of us never see – or never want to see.

As a child, Edward Carnby was given irrefutable proof of that world. He hasn’t slept well since. Now, twenty years later, Edward is a paranormal investigator. When the irrational and the inexplicable become undeniable, he is there. He is not out to change your mind. But he may be the only one who can save your life.

Now, the greatest mystery of Edward’s past is about to become the most dangerous case he has ever faced. Nineteen people have disappeared, and they have only one thing in common – each one grew up in the same orphanage as Edward. Looking for answers, Edward learns that an ancient artifact of considerable power has been discovered in a long-lost shipwreck. Amidst mounting danger, he turns to Aline Cedrac, a brilliant anthropologist who’s also his ex-flame – and the only person he really trusts.

In a world of ancient evils, lost civilizations, shadowy government conspiracies, and deadly paranormal threats, Edward and Aline come together to confront a supernatural enemy unlike anything they’ve ever seen before…one whose very existence could threaten all of humankind.

THE GOOD: Absolutely nothing.

THE BAD: Let’s start with the actors. Tara Reid is intolerable. Are we to believe she is a brilliant anthropologist? Would we buy Paris Hilton playing a rocket scientist? Not a chance. Casting a no-name actress would have been better than trying to pass off Reid as being brilliant at anything—she’s barely an actress. Christian Slater’s too cool, squinty-eyed hero is no better. Sure, he hasn’t worked in a long time but this isn’t the way to get back to stardom.

The rest of the cast seem more like people grabbed off the street and giving a script five minutes before shooting. Reality television has better actors than these “actors.”

The script is awful. Everything is by the book. Alone in the Dark pulls out all the Hollywood clichés and takes them to the extreme as it borrows from Alien, Raiders of the Lost Ark, National Treasure, Dawn of the Dead, and about ever action movie where someone sacrifices their lives for all of humanity.

The director Uwe Boll should be ashamed of himself—unless his goal was to make a major studio B-movie that was supposed to be an A-movie he was a complete failure. Everything about Alone in the Dark is contrived and terribly executed. The props are terrible. The Bureau 713 army has costumes that amount to black pants and t-shirt with helmets and a gun—we can find better costumes at Wal-Mart. The monsters are where Boll blew his budget and even that wasn’t worth it—unless of course they called the folks at Alien and borrowed their monster on the cheap.

FRANKLY: In the end if you need a laugh at the expense of Hollywood than Alone in the Dark is your ticket. Whoever green lighted this should be ashamed of themselves because this is as bad a movie as there is today.

+ Charlie Craine


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